Mystery of the 159,000 special pensions that use up 1bn euros per year

159,000 special pensions, of the military and police personnel, and of former secret services employees will continue to lack transparency, and are set to be recalculated by the ministries that pay them, not by the National Pensions and Social Security House.
This is the first time that the number appears in an official statistics, published yesterday by the Tax Council.
The level of the 159,000 special pensions is not public, which means that neither are the potential savings following the recalculation. These pensions are fully paid from ministries' budgets, i.e. from the state budget.
The other special pensions, of magistrates, aviators and of MPs, around 8,000, paid both from the Pension House and from the state budget, will be recalculated by the Pension House, which publishes their level and the share contributed by the state on its website.
The savings expected by recalculating the 8,000 special pensions in the second category, are of around 100 million euros per year. The estimated savings following the recalculation of the around 159,000 special pensions are not known. At an average 500-euro pension, they cost the budget 1 billion euros per year.
Special pensions are so called because they are calculated as a percentage (usually 85%) of the last gross salary or of the last six gross salaries, compared with those paid by the National Pension House, which calculates them based on contributions paid over time to the pension budget by the current pensioners.