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- Ελληνικά
By letter dated. 16.1.2023 to the Accountant General of the Republic we pointed out that since 2014 the General Accounting Office has been illegally paying active state officials a pension from their previous service as MPs, ministers, etc. As we noted, the Pensions (Certain Officers of the Republic) Act 1980 (Law 49/1980) expressly provides that the pension of the officers covered by the Act (President of the Republic, Speaker of Parliament, Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Members of Parliament) is suspended if they take up "any other office or office in the Republic". This provision has been in force since 1980 and is presumed to be constitutional. Since it applies from the moment a person is appointed to office, it is taken into account in the pension he or she establishes and there is therefore no longer any basis for finding it unconstitutional, especially since in practice all the persons affected were appointed after the law was passed.
Yesterday the General Accounting Office announced that it had received an opinion from the Attorney General that it should make payments in violation of the above express provision of the legislation because otherwise they would go to court and "the success of the claimants would be a foregone conclusion". These are unprecedented positions. The Attorney General of the Republic advises the Accountant General to violate the law and make payments in violation of the law because the Attorney General himself decided to declare the law unconstitutional.
Recall that, only the courts can declare a law unconstitutional and, unless this is done, every law is presumed to be constitutional. And according to the jurisprudence, even the courts, when the question of unconstitutionality of any provision of a law is raised, there is a presumption of constitutionality and before the Court declares the provision as unconstitutional, it must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt.
We think it important to note that even this suspension (or not) is selectively applied. The pension of the former Speaker of Parliament, Mr. M. Karoyan, was suspended in 2021 once he was re-elected as a Member of Parliament, but the pension of the Minister of Finance was not suspended when he was re-appointed as Minister.
The Accountant General in his communication also invokes the public interest. It now "labels" the payment of pensions to sitting state officials as serving the public interest. We note that, as the late former Attorney General Alekos Markides had explained as early as 1996, "public interest cannot justify exemption from the principle of legality, but on the contrary, public interest is only what the constitutionally defined institutions, according to the constitutionally defined hierarchy and procedure, define as public interest. These organs are the constitutional legislature, the common legislature and the government/administration, with this hierarchical priority."
If the administration believed that the law was unconstitutional, it had to promote its amendment or repeal. The rule of law is obviously threatened.
On the basis of the above, the position of the Service, as the authority competent under the Constitution to control any public payment, remains that the payment of pensions, which the law expressly provides that they should be suspended, is manifestly and by definition illegal.
The Attorney General's opinion means something else, even more serious. If the provision in the 1980 Act to suspend a minister's or MP's pension on taking up a new office is unconstitutional for someone who was first appointed a minister or first elected an MP in 2010 or 2015 or 2018, then it is as if to say that no law can ever and no law can remove this distortion for the future.
We will use the case of the Assistant Attorney General himself as an example. In 2018 when he was appointed Minister, the law was already in place since 1980 and it said that if he ever assumes any office the Minister's pension will be suspended. He knew that and it was a given when he served and established the Minister's pension. The Supreme Court has explained that "the expectation of acquiring a claim to a pension arises at the time of recruitment, constitutes, potentially, property and crystallises as a property right on completion of pensionable service in a pensionable post".
It is therefore our position that when Mr. Angelides finally reaches the age of 60, and assuming he still holds office, his pension as a former Minister should be suspended and this is perfectly legal and constitutional. With the opinion now given by the Attorney General, when Mr. Angelides turns 60, he will illegally receive a Minister's pension while serving as an Assistant Attorney General.
Given the recent opinion of the Attorney General, we believe that the Government will never be in a position to table bills that can remove the distortions in the multiple pension issues.
It is therefore our position that the House of Representatives should proceed with the consideration and promotion of the texts that we forwarded to them in November 2023, and which the Services of the House of Representatives have worked on legislatively. If the President of the Republic receives an opinion from the Attorney General that the laws are unconstitutional, they will be sent to the Supreme Constitutional Court, which is the only one competent to decide.
(EAT/NG)
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