Serbia’s pensioners may sue country’s constitutional judges

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The pensioners in Serbia consider a lawsuit against the Constitutional Court’s judges for not ruling on their initiative for the abolishment of a temporary law on pensions’ reduction, an official said on Monday.

Misa Radovic, form the Association of the Pensioners’ Unions, said that they have been waiting in vain for three months for an answer from the Constitutional Court and that thus they might file criminal charges against the Court’s judges.

“We will most probably file criminal charges against the Constitutional Court’s judges, especially against its president, because it is a matter of a three-year-long ill-treatment of 740,000 people,” Radovic said.

He added that the Court first rejected them a month after the law was introduced with an explanation that “the country was in a difficult situation”.

The pensioners badly need an answer from the Constitutional Court, as the last domestic judiciary level they turned to before they can go to the court in Strasbourg to seek their rights.

Serbia’s government introduced the law on the temporary reduction of pensions by the end of 2014 in order to stabilise its finances.

It was supposed to last for three years, but the pensioners have maintained the law was illegal since the pensions are guaranteed by the constitution.

The pensions were lowered by 10 plus percent, depending on the amount, while the lowest ones, up to just over 200 Euros, were not reduced.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Serbia’s Fiscal Council suggested to the government to abolish the law, with the IMF saying that temporarily did not mean permanent.

But both Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic have called for a cautious approach and said that the abolishment would mean the pensioners would have less than before the law had been introduced since the retirees had got an increase twice so far.