Brussels, 09/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - The provision of the Spanish law on the calculation of permanent invalidity pensions, which reduces the pension payable to some part-time workers, disadvantages these workers, in comparison with full-time workers and introduces discrimination on the grounds of gender, contrary to EU law.
That is the view of Advocate general Yves Bot in his opinion delivered on Thursday 9 October in a case (|C-527/13) in which the Court of Justice of the EU was asked by the Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Galicia (High Court of Justice, Galicia, Spain) to assess whether the provisions for the calculation of permanent invalidity pensions in Spain are compatible with EU law which precludes discrimination between men and women in matters of social security (Directive 79/7/EEC) and between full-time and part-time workers (Directive 97/81/EC). At issue is a corrective mechanism which enables periods during which the insured person has not paid contributions to the social security scheme in the eight years prior to the occurrence of the event giving rise to the invalidity to form part of the calculation of the invalidity pension. Under this mechanism, if the person concerned ceased his/her professional activity immediately after a period of full-time employment, the contribution applicable to periods of full-time employment is to be taken into account. By contrast, if the person concerned was working part-time during the period immediately prior to the moment when his contribution payments were interrupted, the integration of the periods during which that person did not pay contributions is to be calculated using a reduced contribution: the reduction is the result of applying the part-time work coefficient.
In his opinion, Advocate General Bot states that this method of calculation penalises workers who have engaged in part-time work during the period immediately prior to the interruption of their contributions to the social security scheme. He also considers that, although the Spanish law does not differentiate between male workers and female workers, it nonetheless introduces indirect discrimination between male and female workers, since, in Spain, the percentage of female part-time workers is considerably higher than the percentage of male part-time workers. In the case at issue, (a female full-time worker who had fully contributed to the social security system between 1971 and 2010, apart from a period between September 1998 and January 2002 when she worked part-time and from January 2002 to November 2005 when she did not engage in any professional activity), the Advocate General is of the view that the method in question reduces the permanent invalidity pension in a way which is disproportionate in view of the contributions paid by the plaintiff over the whole of her professional career. (FG)