Czech Lower House

ČTK

Lower House To Vote On Pension Increase August 22nd

Prague, Aug 8 (CTK) – The Czech Chamber of Deputies will take a new vote on a planned raising of pensions on August 22 to choose between its own previously approved version of the bill, and that proposed by the Senate, the upper house of parliament, the Chamber’s organisational committee decided today.

 

In its version, the Senate proposed another method of raising pensions than the one the lower house had passed in June.

 

The Chamber’s version raises the fixed pension base by 320 crowns a month. Together with its regular indexation, the average monthly pension would rise by 918 crowns. In addition, the pensioners over 85 would see their pension increase by 1,000 crowns.

 

The Senate, on its part, wants the 1000-crown monthly increase for the people who have been drawing pension for over 25 years and not for those over 85, which is why it returned the bill to the lower house for reappraisal in mid-July.

 

According to the opposition Civic Democrats (ODS), the Senate version is more just to the women who brought up children and therefore retired earlier than men.

 

Pensions have been regularly indexed in January in dependence on the growth of real wages and prices.

 

The new bill preserves this rule, but it increases the sum added to the base pension and accordingly reduces the sum that raises pensions in a way equivalent to the clients’ previous contributions to the pension system.

 

The planned change will slightly weaken the principle of merit, which secures higher pensions for those who paid higher contributions to the pay-as-you-go pension system at their productive age.

 

The state will spend some 14.2 billion crowns on raising the pensions next year if the bill were passed in time in the wording approved by the cabinet and the Chamber of Deputies. The approval of the Senate version would increase the costs by another two billion crowns.