Extraordinary meeting of the House of Representatives on the proposal to limit the extraordinary June valorization of pensions, February 28, 2023, Prague. From the left, Minister of Finance Zbyněk Stanjura (ODS), Minister of the Interior Vít Rakušan (STAN) and Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL).
Prague – Today at 1:00 a.m., based on the agreement of the chairmen of the parliamentary clubs, the House of Representatives suspended the debate on the controversial government proposal for a slower increase in pensions starting this June. The meeting will continue from 7:00 a.m. today. The meeting started on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m., including breaks in the meeting, thus lasting 39 hours. The debate itself, without breaks, has lasted approximately 32 hours so far. Deputies managed to confirm the state of legislative emergency, approved the program of the meeting and are now debating whether the conditions for discussing the government's amendment in abbreviated proceedings persist. Six dozen MPs are still signing up for the debate on this topic.
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Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labor Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL), who is presenting the law on behalf of the government, announced that he would make a more extensive speech in the morning. In it, he would mainly like to explain the details of this proposal to the opposition.
The opposition has already announced in advance that it will obstruct the discussion of the law and prevent its adoption. In the debate in the evening and night hours, complaints were again heard that Minister Jurečka should have come up with the change in the valorization formula already last year. The opposition is also of the opinion that the House should discuss the law in regular mode in three readings and not in a state of legislative emergency. “We don't know anything like this and we are being told something about which I have great doubts,” declared the chairperson of the ANO club Alena Schillerová. Opposition speakers questioned the government's reasoning that leaving the original valuation according to the current law would mean significant economic damage. Minister Jurečka said that in over the next ten years, it would be about 600 billion crowns in total.
“What causes the damage? By paying what the law says?” asked Berenika Peštová (ANO). According to the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Radek Vondráček (ANO), it is not a shame that pensioners will have roughly the same real income in the next ten years. According to Lucie Šafránková (SPD ) is the claim of great economic damage that would be caused by a higher valuation, insulting to pensioners and untrue. According to her, the damage will be caused when the Parliament approves the change in the law, because their purchasing power will fall.
The government amendment takes this into account , that the average monthly pension will increase from June by 760 crowns instead of the expected 1,770 crowns, as it would be according to the currently valid legal rules. According to the explanatory report, the state will save 19.4 billion crowns this year and 33 billion crowns next year.
The opposition calls it, among other things, antisocial or unconstitutional.If the law goes into effect, opposition politicians want to turn to the Constitutional Court.
