Hundreds of thousands of Polish pensioners stand to receive higher monthly payments under a government bill designed to fix a problem created by a 2013 law that reduced pensions for people who had taken early retirement.
The draft legislation has been sent for public consultation, according to the Polish daily Fakt. It targets women born between 1954 and 1959 and men born between 1949 and 1952 and in 1954 who took early retirement before 6 June 2012.
How the 2013 change hurt retirees
Before 2013, drawing an early pension did not reduce the standard pension a worker would later receive, because the early pension was treated as compensation for working in demanding occupations. The 2013 reform ended that arrangement, meaning that payments received during early retirement were effectively deducted from the standard pension when retirees reached the general retirement age.
The Constitutional Tribunal did not rule that removing the privilege was itself unjust, but it found that the rules could not be applied to people who had retired early without being informed that doing so would reduce their future standard pension.
How recalculations would work
Under the proposed bill, pensions would be recalculated using a special corrective coefficient based on the ratio of months during which early benefits were drawn before and after the June 2012 rule change.
Draft calculations included in the proposal illustrate the potential increases. A man born in 1954 who began drawing an early pension in 2010 and applied for his standard pension in 2019 would see an increase of 552 zloty gross per month. A woman born in 1949 who started early retirement in 2006 and applied for her standard pension in 2020 would receive an additional 393 zloty gross. A woman born in 1957 who began early retirement in 2008 and applied for her standard pension in 2024 would gain 89 zloty gross. A man born in 1950 who started early retirement in 2011 and applied for his standard pension in 2016 would receive 303 zloty gross more per month.
Pensions for the birth years covered by the law would be recalculated automatically from 1 April 2027.
Cost and scope
The projected cost of the changes is 400 million zloty in the first year and 7 billion zloty over a decade. The bill's authors note that the expense is most likely the reason not all affected birth cohorts have been included from the outset.
Background
The 2013 rules were introduced to reduce pressure on the pension system by discouraging early retirement, so that workers would contribute for longer and help fund payments to current pensioners. Critics argued the reform undermined the original purpose of early retirement, which had long served as compensation for people in particularly demanding or important occupations. After the change, an early pension was no longer a separate compensatory benefit but simply an option to draw down standard entitlements ahead of schedule.
