Automatic revaluation of pensions: the "judges of the laws" of the Constitutional Court could not have decided otherwise, unless they disavowed sentence no. 30 of 2015, the (questionable) provision which had identified some unconstitutionality profiles in the provision contained in the paragraph 25 of the Salva Italia decree which, at the end of 2011, blocked the equalization for pensions exceeding 3 times the minimum for the years 2012 and 2013.
Basically, the indexation at 100% of the cost of living on the pension portion remained in place up to 3 times the minimum treatment (1.405,05 gross monthly euros in 2012, and 1.443 in 2013), while pensions exceeding 3 times the at least they received no re-evaluation. The Renzi Government ran for cover with Legislative Decree 65/2015 (converted by Law 109/2015), issued following the sentence of the Constitutional Court, reformulating the rules as described in the following sheet:
CARD
For the years 2012 and 2013:
• 100% of Istat up to 3 times the INPS minimum;
• 40% over 3 and up to 4 times the minimum;
• 20% over 4 and up to 5 times the minimum;
• 10% over 5 and up to 6 times the minimum;
• no revaluation beyond 6 times the minimum.
For the years 2014 and 2015:
• 100% of Istat up to 3 times the INPS minimum;
• 8% over 3 and up to 4 times the minimum;
• 4% over 4 and up to 5 times the minimum;
• 2% over 5 and up to 6 times the minimum;
• no revaluation beyond 6 times the minimum.
For the 2016:
• 100% of Istat up to 3 times the INPS minimum;
• 20% over 3 and up to 4 times the minimum;
• 10% over 4 and up to 5 times the minimum;
• 5% over 5 and up to 6 times the minimum;
• no revaluation beyond six times the minimum.
Starting from 2017, the restoration of the normal indexation system was envisaged, but the 2016 budget law extended the provisional regime in force in 2015 to the whole of 2018, with the aim - it should be remembered - of covering the changes to the Women's Option .
It is precisely on the decree n.65/2015 that the College pronounced itself (it is said through a broad and responsible consensus) recognizing its legitimacy. We have already anticipated that there could not have been a different outcome and not only due to the financial burden that a different sentence would have had, producing a veritable tsunami in the public accounts. This thesis (the Court deliberately saves the Government) is supported by the newspapers and junkyard talk shows, even going as far as to argue that in this way the rights of pensioners have been sacrificed. The sentence of last October 25 is also correct in point of law.
It is enough to recall the operative part of sentence n.30/2015, in the crucial passage: the Court '' declares the constitutional illegitimacy of the art. 24, paragraph 25, of the decree-law of 6 December 2011, n. 201 (Urgent provisions for the growth, equity and consolidation of public finances), converted, with amendments, by art. 1, paragraph 1, of the law of 22 December 2011, n. 214, in the part in which it provides that «In consideration of the contingent financial situation, the automatic revaluation of pension benefits, according to the mechanism established by art. 34, paragraph 1, of the law of 23 December 1998, n. 448, is recognized, for the years 2012 and 2013, exclusively for pensions of a total amount up to three times the minimum INPS treatment, to the extent of 100 per cent».
This means that paragraph 25 was not quashed in its entirety (in the following line of the sentence the ''judges of the laws'' declared an appeal in this sense inadmissible). To correctly interpret the motivations of the sentence, the Court did not judge the intervention itself illegitimate (if it had done so it would have contradicted the jurisprudence on the matter), but its criteria and modalities.
In fact, it should be remembered that in the 2008 Budget Law, the Prodi Government, as part of the implementation of the 2007 Welfare Protocol, cut for one year the automatic equalization on pensions exceeding eight times the minimum (at the time about 3,5 1,4 euros gross per month), for the amount of XNUMX billion, for the sole purpose of compensating for the correction of the "scale" introduced in the Maroni law. Appeals were raised (moreover by the same associations of executives who also presented the latter) which the Consulta rejected.
In 2015, in the opinion of the Court, the 2011 case presented different profiles, because the measure contained in the Salva Italia decree intervened - permanently - on medium-low benefits, so as to call into question their adequacy (as well as the criteria of proportionality and reasonableness). Then, the consideration that the Monti Government provision would not have been sufficiently motivated with reference to "the contingent financial situation" is laughable, as if in the Palazzo della Consulta they no longer remembered that, in November 2011, Italy, on the verge of bankruptcy .
Given all of the above, the Government reacted with an emergency provision, remodulating the cut in the automatic revaluation (with decree no. 65, another 2 million pensioners were included in the exemption, thus, in all, the "saved" rose to 12 million out of 16 million interested parties) as we reported in the profile. We believe that the Consulta, having to pronounce itself ex novo, could not have failed to recognize more equitable, and therefore inspired by criteria of proportionality and reasonableness, the new ''remedial'' intervention.
If this had not been the case, regardless of the financial effects, the Constitutional Court would have once again gone beyond its institutional role, ruling on a purely political question such as the criterion of the adequacy of social security benefits indicated by art. 38 of the Charter. The content of the social rights recognized to citizens and workers cannot ignore the economic conditions of a country and what they can guarantee in a given historical phase.
Unfortunately, the good news coming from the Palazzo della Consulta was disturbed by the demagogic slide of the Pd leadership group on the ''block'' of the adjustment of the retirement age to life expectancy, after Istat had indicated the significant increases . And we are well aware that this Parliament is unfortunately always ready to support poisoned demagoguery projects.
