The law passed in August to abolish the practice of paying multiple pensions to government officials “is an improvement but does not correct all distortions”, accountant-general Andreas Antoniades said on Friday.
Speaking on the ‘A look at the economy’ podcast, he said the current legal framework surrounding the matter “could be simplified further” and suggested that “there could be a single fund which would reward everyone based on years of service and pensionable earnings”.
This, he said, would be “fairer” than the current system.
To this end, he said Cyprus has “one of the most complex systems in the European Union” regarding state officials’ pensions.
Looking over the new laws, he said that new state officials already receiving a pension for prior service will be impacted by the new law and as such will receive only the first €500 from that pension for the duration of their term in office, but that the system for incumbents will be different.
“For example, in the 2026 parliamentary election, incumbents who are elected will have the right, not the obligation, to renounce any other pensions they have from other positions. They have 15 days to request a voluntary renunciation from the finance ministry,” he said.
The new laws will impact all stage officials to be appointed or elected after 2026, and will, in addition to the freezing of pensions for people in official roles, raise the minimum pensionable age for state officials from 60 years old to 65 years old.
They were signed into law by President Nikos Christodoulides in August after he had initially sent six of the bills passed by parliament back from whence they came.
Parliament convened earlier in August to deal with the matter, with House finance committee chairwoman and Diko MP Christiana Erotokritou saying at the time that efforts had been made to “close a very difficult chapter, which has provoked Cypriot society, and to have a different approach”.
“There are constitutional limitations, and not all inequalities have been eliminated, but there will be a new institutional framework which does not have all the distortions the current one does, from which the anger and the indignation of the public stems,” she said.
However, not all MPs were as impressed, with Dipa MP Marinos Mousiouttas saying that the new iteration of the laws may also be unconstitutional.
“In practice, we are voting for the square root of nothing,” he said, warning that if the laws are found to be unconstitutional, “the old regime will remain in force, with more beneficiaries having been added”.
