whether it would be beneficial for them to terminate their employment legal
relationships pursuant to Article 100, Paragraph One of the Labour Law, which
provides for the right to give a notice in writing of termination of an employment
contract one month in advance.
Moreover, there were cases when deductions from the pensions of employed
pensioners were made even if the employment legal relationships had in fact been
terminated. As a result, legal uncertainty increased even more. Annotation to the
Disbursement Law Draft also conceded that the enforcement of this law from 1 July
2009 was unfeasible (see Article I, Annotation, the Draft Law on State Pension and
State Allowance Disbursement in the Period from 2009 to 2012).
The Constitutional Court has previously adjudicated that the amount of pensions of
employed pensioners can be restricted, taking into account their income from
employment (see Clause 3.1.1 of the Concluding Part of the Constitutional Court
Judgment in the Case No. 2001-12-01 passed on 19 March 2002). However, the
impugned legal provisions to be adjudicated within this Case do not envisage an allencompassing change of State policy with regard to the amount of pensions of
employed pensioners; the provisions in question provide only a temporary restriction
of pension disbursements. In any event, the employed pensioners could not foresee
such a change of legal order – even if this change was supposed to be temporary; nor
could they make a well-considered choice.
Adjudicating whether a reasonable balance has been maintained between the need to
protect legitimate expectations of persons and the need to secure public interests, one
should consider whether the planned transition to the new legal order is sufficiently
lenient. The Constitutional Court has previously established that such a lenient
transition may be expressed in the form of setting down a reasonable transitional
period or granting a compensation (see Paragraph 2 of the Concluding Part of the
Constitutional Court Judgment in the Case No. 2001-12-01 passed on 25 March
2003). Having regard of the duty to protect persons’ reasonable confidence in the
permanence of legal order ensuing from the principle of legitimate expectations, the
State has not only rights; it also has a duty to counter the situations when public
interests are seriously jeopardised. If legal order is changed for the common good of
society, then such an action is permissible. On this account, a temporary reduction of
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