Greece’s backlog of unprocessed pensions is almost cleared

The national social security agency EFKA approved 30,200 pension applications in July, further clearing an accumulated backlog of over a million cases.

At this point, 96% of the applications submitted between 2016 and 2022 have been approved.

However, there still remain 56,000 main pensions to be processed, as well as tens of thousands of auxiliary pensions, lump-sum payments and other, more specific cases.

There are also several appeals procedures, estimated at between 2,000 and 3,000, for those who were awarded a smaller pension than they expected.

According to Labor Ministry data, all backlogs dating from 2016 to 2018 have been cleared, together with 95.2% of applications from 2020, 85.2% from 2021 and 82% from the first five months of 2022.

One benefit of the backlog clearing is that pensioners who were paid a bare minimum while their application was pending will get backdated pay.