Indebtedness of the state based on court decisions in cases regarding the appointment and transfer of pensions reached 79.8 billion hryvnias. The amount owed grows every year as the state continues to lose more court cases to retirees.
In 2023, the courts made 240,000 decisions in pension disputes not in favor of the state, in 2024 – more than 100,000 more. In the first two months of 2025, pensioners won 18,300 cases, due to which the debt increased by another 1.64 billion hryvnias.
It mostly refers to a part of court decisions that oblige the Pension Fund to recalculate pensions retroactively and to compensate for the amounts not received for previous years. In addition, the fund pays out tens of billions of hryvnias in additional funds based on decisions that provide for increased pensions to individual plaintiffs.
The vast majority of such decisions concern so-called special pensioners — people who receive a pension not according to general rules, but according to special laws. This category includes former military personnel, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, and others. Sometimes, in their decisions, the courts rely on the norms of laws that have already lost their validity.
“In connection with the adopted court decisions, pensions for these categories of persons (prosecutors, judges, persons dismissed from service) will be transferred from the financial support that they did not receive, as well as those that do not correspond to the adopted legislative acts. Such decisions lead to an increase in the Pension Fund’s expenses for the payment of current pensions by approximately UAH 34.3 billion by 2025.”, the Ministry of Social Policy reported.
The government is trying to reduce the budget burden from new court decisions, but such attempts are also contested. Courts usually independently determine the amount of pensions and the order of their payment, without taking into account the financial limitations of the state budget.
