insurance contributions, the required economy could be achieved only by reducing the amount of the established social security disbursements. 3.6. The impugned provisions that prescribe a small and fixed-term reduction of state pension amount should be viewed in the context that, during the improvement of economic situation and increase of available resources, the amount of state pensions has been substantially increased over the years. The Saeima especially drew the attention of the Constitutional Court to the fact that the restriction prescribed by the impugned provisions is a temporary measure and Article 9 of the Disbursement Law contains a constant and publicly controllable monitoring mechanism for this law. Taking into account the above, the Saeima pleaded the Constitutional Court to declare Paragraph One of Article 2 of the Disbursement Law as conformable with Articles 1 and 109 of the Constitution as well as to declare Paragraph One of Article 3 of the Disbursement Law as conformable with Articles 1, 91 105 and 109 of the Constitution. 4. The arguments of the summoned party – the Cabinet of Ministers – that substantiate the conformity of the impugned provisions with the Constitution, were similar to the arguments of the Saeima. When answering the questions of the Constitutional Court, the Cabinet of Ministers pointed out that the reference to a possible contradiction with the Constitution in the annotation of the Disbursement Law should be understood as drawing attention to a possible risk that should be particularly assessed during each stage of discussion of the draft law. The above reference in the annotation is informative, and as such is not founded on facts, for it contains neither any specific facts nor arguments that would give evidence concerning breach of the respective articles of the Constitution. During the negotiations, the international creditors repeatedly took notice of the possibility that the sustainability of the social budget would be endangered even in the case of freezing the indexation of pensions. Nevertheless, the social area has been spared as much as possible and such reductions of old age pensions as prescribed by the impugned provisions were not included in any of the initial loan agreements. They were included only in the latest stages: with the European Community – in the 11