The leader of the Democrats party, Mirando Mrsic, said on Tuesday that he would forward a billinto parliamentary procedure which would enable the payment of pensions earned under separate pension rules from the relevant ministries rather than from the pension system.

Mrsic told a news conference that funding the preferential pension treatment was actually the biggest problem of the Croatian pension system.

This year, 40 billion kuna will have been set aside for pensions, of which nine billion will go for the so-called preferential pension allowances, and seven billion of that amount is paid under war veterans’ pension scheme, the opposition lawmaker said.

He insists that it would be recommendable to separate the sources of payment of pensions so that pensions paid under war veterans’ pension scheme should be allocated from the relevant ministry.

In his opinion, those pensions should be indexed to workers’ pension allowances only when that can be justified budget-wise.

Mrsic criticised the government of sticking to the current model of the payment of all pensions from the same fund only to ensure support of more voters for the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).

He also accused the authorities of undermining the sustainability of the pension system only to make sure that they would remain in power.

Mrsic said that statistics of the Croatian Pension Insurance Fund (HZMO) show that there were 113,000 recipients — retired war veterans or members of their families– of pension allowances paid under compensation schemes for war veterans.

Also, 71,366 of them receive a monthly allowance in the amount of HRK 5,616 (approximately EUR 760), and the remaining 35,500 recipients receive pensions under general pension terms plus an average monthly benefit of HRK 2,511 (approximately €340). For the sake of comparison, Mrsic said that the average worker’s pension was HRK 2,343 (approx. EUR 317).

Ministry. Veteran pensions earned on the frontline

After recent criticism made by Mrsic about this topic, War Veterans’ Ministry Tomo Medved stressed that veteran pensions were earned on the frontline where veterans sacrificed their health and life for the country’s freedom.

“Mrsic… singles out veteran pensions in the average amount of HRK 5,567 disregarding the fact that they are pensions of 56,000 disabled war veterans who were not able to pay pension insurance contributions because they sustained injuries as very young people defending the Homeland,” the ministry said in its response in late May.

The ministry further recalled that Mrsic fails to mention other categories of recipients of pensions granted under special regulations, such as former members of the Yugoslav People’s Army, former members of the World War II Croatian Homeland Army, participants in the National Liberation Struggle, members of Yugoslav government bodies, whose pensions, it says, are much higher than the pensions of disabled war veterans.

(EUR 1 = HRK 7.4)