People’s deputies have taken up the revision of special pensions: what amounts are being discussed
According to the data of the Ministry of Social Policy, as of January 1, 2024, the average pension of a former People's Deputy was 17.9 thousand hryvnias per month.
A group of 56 people’s deputies appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine with a request to declare unconstitutional the decision to cancel the special pension regime for former people’s deputies, which was implemented in 2017.
As informs “Economic truth”, deputies seek to restore special pensions for colleagues of the first to eighth convocations, that is, those who held their positions from 1990 to October 1, 2017, when the law “On the reform of the solidarity level of the pension system” came into force.
Before the adoption of this law, former people’s deputies had two main advantages when calculating pensions:
- The size of the deputy’s pension was 60% of their salary, while for most citizens this indicator is 30-35%.
- The pension was calculated not from the average salary over the years of work, but from the current salary with allowances of current people’s deputies.
According to the Ministry of Social Policy, as of January 1, 2024, the average pension of a former MP was 17.9 thousand hryvnias per month, which is more than three times higher than the average pension for the rest of Ukrainians, which is 5.8 thousand hryvnias.
Deputies who signed the appeal to the Central Committee of the Central Committee of Ukraine claim that their decision is aimed at supporting their colleagues from previous convocations. For example, Oleksandr Kopylenko (“Servant of the People”) noted that the reason for signing it was the situation with the collection of funds for the treatment of Stepan Khmara, one of the founders of Ukrainian statehood.
Serhiy Taruta (“Fatherland”) claims that former people’s deputies receive a “minimum pension”, although this statement does not correspond to the data of the Ministry of Social Policy and the content of the submission to the KSU.
If the Constitutional Court makes a positive decision, 1,100 former deputies will have the right to recalculate their pensions. According to the calculations of “Economic Truth”, additional costs for the payment of these pensions will amount to 79.2 million hryvnias per year.
Experts warn that such a decision may pave the way for the restoration of special pensions not only for ex-deputies, but also for future ones. However, Yuliya Kyrychenko, a representative of deputies in the KSU, considers such an option unlikely.
The deputies decided to turn to the Constitutional Court, rather than vote for the corresponding draft law in the Verkhovna Rada. According to Serhiy Taruta, this is due to fears that they may be accused of trying to pass the law “for themselves”.
According to the Ministry of Social Policy, the average pension of a former deputy as of January 1, 2024 was 17.9 thousand hryvnias, which is three times more than the average pension of other citizens. In the case of the return of the special regime, the pensions of ex-deputies may increase to 23.6 thousand hryvnias per month, which contrasts with Serhiy Taruta’s statement about the “minimum pension” of 2,300 hryvnias.
Until 2017, the pension of a people’s deputy was 60% of his salary, which in 2023, according to declarations, ranged from 45,000 to 55,000 hryvnias per month.
