Constitutional Court in Brno – illustrative photo.
Prague – The processing of a proposal to the Constitutional Court (ÚS) to cancel the controversial government amendment on shortening the June valorization of pensions could take about a month. In today's Questions of Václav Moravec on Czech Television, the chairman of the parliamentary constitutional and legal committee Radek Vondráček (ANO) said this. The representatives of the opposition movement ANO are convinced of the retroactive validity of the law and they do not like the way of its abbreviated parliamentary approval in a state of legislative emergency. The Cabinet justified the procedure with the threat of significant economic damage.
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According to Vondráček, the initiative will be drafted by an expert in constitutional law, and then, according to him, it could still pass the opposition. “I think a month is a real time,” he stated. The draft has not yet been published in the Collection of Laws, it is expected that it will happen at the beginning of next week
According to the amendment, the average monthly pension will increase from June by 760 crowns instead of the expected 1,770 crowns, as would be the case under normal legal rules. According to the government, the reduction in valuation is necessary to stabilize public finances, the state will save 19.4 billion crowns this year alone. The opposition, on the other hand, talks about impoverishment or robbing pensioners, who will lose an average of around 7,000 crowns this year alone.
Opposition politicians claim that pensioners were already entitled to standard valuation according to generally applicable rules at the end of January, taking into account the rate of price growth in the first month of this year. The Cabinet does not agree with such an interpretation of the law. According to him, the claim arises only after the issuance of the relevant government regulation, and therefore it is not possible to point to a violation of the legitimate expectations of pensioners. The deadline for issuing the ordinance is Wednesday, March 22. By then, the amendment must be published in the Collection.
The parliamentary approval of the pension growth restriction was accompanied by extensive opposition obstruction. After thinking it over, the new president Petr Pavel announced on Wednesday that he would sign the reduction of the June valuation, which he did a day later. But they see it as necessary for constitutional judges to review the law. He announced that if the opposition had not turned to the Constitutional Court, he would have submitted the initiative himself.
“We know that we want to challenge the entire pension amendment, we know what arguments he wants, and that is why we want to submit it,” he said today Vondráček, who considers the president's attitude unreadable. On the contrary, according to the Speaker of the House Markéta Pekarová Adamová (TOP 09), Pavel behaved smartly, signing the law with a reservation. She is convinced that the pension amendment will stand up in the Constitutional Court.
