Spanish legislation on the calculation of retirement pensions for part-time workers is contrary to EU law if it is found to be particularly disadvantageous to female workers, according to a judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union, delivered on Wednesday 8 May (Case C-161/18).
Ms Violeta Villar Láiz challenged the calculation of retirement pensions by the National Institute of Social Security. The reason behind this being that the method of calculation used constitutes indirect discrimination on the grounds of gender, since the majority of part-time workers in Spain are women.
The Court states, first of all, that the Directive (79/7/EEC) prohibits any discrimination on the grounds of gender, in particular the calculation of social security benefits.
The Court observes that short part-time workers who, according to the case presented to the Court, represent 65 % of part-time workers, are placed at a disadvantage because of the application of this reduction factor.
The Court goes on to examine whether the Spanish legislation reflects a legitimate social policy objective. It states that the national legislation at issue contains two elements that are liable to reduce the amount of the retirement pensions of part-time workers: 1) the basic amount is, for a part-time worker, lower than the basic amount of a comparable full-time worker; 2) while that basic amount is multiplied by a percentage according to the number of days of contribution, that number of days is itself modified by a reduction factor.
Although the second element is mitigated by the fact that the number of days of contribution established after the application of the reduction factor is increased by the application of a multiplication factor of 1.5, “the first element is itself capable of ensuring that the achievement of the objective pursued, which is, specifically, the protection of a social security system that relies on contributions”.
Thus, the application, in addition, of a reduction factor relative to part-time work goes beyond what is necessary to attain that objective and entails for the group of workers engaged in short part-time work, a reduction in the amount of the retirement pension greater than that which would result from only taking their working time into account pro rata temporis, the Court concludes.
See the judgment: http://bit.ly/2PVshHF. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)