Costly errors in the review of pensions

The new method of recalculating more than 1 million auxiliary pensions has brought with it errors that are costing pensioners dearly.

Every day brings more complaints about reductions, even in cases where the sum of the main and the auxiliary pensions does not exceed 1,300 euros per month gross. As legal sources note to Kathimerini, this most likely concerns mistakes made during in the process, but it is the pensioners themselves who have to point them out to their social security funds in order to claim the difference.

Law firms which have compared the original and final amounts without having access to all the figures – as no one outside the system knows the mechanism or the algorithm used for the recalculation – speak of major discrepancies, even in cases where people were insured with the same fund, having been on the same salaries and worked the same number of years. For instance, there are people with lower salaries and fewer years of work that after the recalculation appear to qualify for a higher pension than others with higher salaries and more years at work.

Uncertainty and confusion are on the rise as the Single Fund for Auxiliary Social Security (ETEA) and the Labor Ministry refuse to reveal the method used for the recalculation of pensions.