96% of applications submitted to FECA for a basic pension from 2016 to July 2022 were issued, while the competent services of the body broke another record in the summer, issuing 30,200 new pensions last month. Of course, although this is a new monthly disbursement record, there are still at least 56,000 basic pensions, as well as tens of thousands of international, ancillary and lump-sum pensions that are expected, even if in 5 years, and objections are now common, as many insured receive less than expected pension thanks to the new fast track system, trust pensions and digitized process.

Big progress

The progress made is significant and is reflected in the figures provided by the Department of Labor. In particular, according to them, the unpaid basic pensions submitted in 2019 were reset to zero. Recall that the debt for 2016-2018 has already been reset to zero. Accordingly, the expected pensions for 2020 are also tending to zero, as at the end of July 95.6% of applications were granted, and for 2021 the corresponding percentage reaches 85.2%. In fact, for 2022, 82% of applications submitted in the first 5 months of the year have already been processed, which, according to the FECA administration, indicates a significant acceleration in the processing of new applications. Characteristically, this acceleration in many cases makes it possible to issue a pension even within 60 days. Some of them, of course, about 20%, based on calculations regarding cases of successive or parallel insurance or claims with the recognition of fictitious years, come out with reservations. With a slight delay, FECA now indicates in the decision that the pension is subject to reservations and that within a reasonable time – within 3-4 months – the FECA rapporteurs will check the decision in order to pay the full amount. According to the first data (the official ones will be in the coming days), at the moment in all the competent services of the fund there are about 2000-3000 objections from pensioners who find smaller pensions than those who are really entitled. In fact, the EFKA administration has given instructions that if a large discrepancy is found, i.e. the pensioner has other years of insurance either from the buyout or from the second fund, the check is carried out in order of priority.

Several objections from insured persons who expected large sums of pensions issued under the accelerated procedure.

In total, for 7 months of January-July this year, 169,146 new basic pensions were issued, which is 5,500 more than was issued for the entire 2020 (163,819), and 46,000 more than in 2019, when 123,324 were issued pensions. Thus, according to data for July, the debt on basic pensions was limited to 56 thousand. However, EFKA estimates that the number of expected pensions that can be issued is much smaller, estimated at 36,000 people. And that’s because there are about 20,000 pension cases that are found to be potentially inflexible or expected to be rejected. These cases concern about 11,000 applications for which there is no statutory pension entitlement, 2,000 applications with outstanding debts over the limit, 1,000 cases with open legal cases with EFKA, and 6,000 applications for which there is no medical opinion.

In addition, in its statement, EFKA estimates that most of these 36,000 overdue basic pensions have already been disbursed during August, and this is expected to be reflected in official figures to be released next month.

State pensions

It should be noted that most of the remaining pensions relate mainly to state pensions, where, in cooperation with the General Secretariat of Public Administration Information Systems of the Ministry of Digital Governance, a debt de-escalation plan is already being implemented. creating a fully automated issuance process. Now, taking into account the data of July, 95% of the basic pensions applied for from 2016 to the present day have been issued, which allows us to achieve the goal of zeroing unpaid amounts (even basic ones, except for inflexible and international ones) within the summer. According to Minister of Labor Kostis Hatzidakis, July was the best month for EFKA with the highest number of basic pension payments. “Now the data proves that the problem of overdue basic pensions is moving towards its final solution,” the minister said, adding that this is the result of the work of both EFKA employees and a number of policies, actions and tools that have been implemented and that they have made possible something that so far seemed impossible to many. “We continue with the same speed and determination to issue the remaining pensions,” concluded Mr. Hatzidakis.