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Special pensions law sent back to Parliament by Constitutional Court
The Constitutional Court of Romania decided on Wednesday to send back to the Parliament the Law amending the special pensions, after some articles were declared unconstitutional.
"As a result of the decision, the law will return to the Parliament to be brought into line with the Court's decision," announced Wednesday the president of the CCR, Marian Enache.
"The Court, in a quorum of eight justices, one justice being absent and motivated, decided that the Service Pensions Law is constitutional as a whole, but the Court found the unconstitutionality of some intrinsic criticisms regarding some provisions of the law. (...) As effect of the decision, the law will return to the Parliament, to be brought into line with the decision of the Court, according to Article 147 paragraph 2 of the Constitution," CCR head Enache said.
"In essence, the Court found that the reduction of the calculation base of service pensions in the justice system, as well as the failure to regulate effective transitional provisions regarding the increase, on the one hand, of the share of actual seniority in function, and, on the other hand, of the retirement age required for granting the service pension, affect the functional/institutional component of the principle of independence of justice in its substance. Moreover, it violates the quality requirements of the law by the lack of clear, precise and predictable transitional regulations on updating service pensions and eliminating the 1% increase in 80% value, which is applied to the calculation base of the service pension for each year exceeding the 25 years length of standard age. The Court held that the recalculation of service pensions in payment affects legal certainty in the non-retroactivity component of the law. Legal certainty requires and entails protection of guarantees relating to the preservation of the right that was acquired by issuing the retirement decision," CCR explained.
"The Court has also noticed that the non-contributory part of the service pension may be taxed separately from its contributory share conditional on its application to all categories of recipients of service pensions, without distinction. The criticized law introduces such taxation, but does not clearly establish the basis of taxation, which is contrary to the quality requirements of the law. The Court also noted that taxation cannot have a sanctioning character, because it practically leads to a rethinking and indirect restructuring of the very basis for calculating the service pension," the Constitutional Court also said.
On June 29, the High Court of Cassation and Justice (Supreme Court) notified the Constitutional Court about the Law amending and supplementing some normative acts in the field of service pensions, but also about the normative act on increasing the retirement age. The draft refers to special pensions of magistrates, military, diplomats, parliamentary functionaries, staff of the Court of Auditors, aeronautics.
The piece of legislation aims at calculating service pensions starting from seniority in the specialty, reducing the calculation percentage related to the income obtained and aligning the minimum contributory period to that applied in the public pension system.
According to this law, prosecutors and judges will be able to retire until 2028 under the same conditions as before, that is, regardless of age, if they have 25 years of work and benefit from a pension amounting to 80% of the gross allowance and bonuses in the last month of activity. The same retirement conditions provided by the laws in force will benefit military retirees in the next five years. At the same time, pensions higher than 4,000 RON net will be taxed at 15%.