N1HRV — broadcast
20260806 140000 UTC
551 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
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[00:00:00] uh, there was a clear intention, there was a clear,
[00:00:03] clear reasoning, maybe now for
[00:00:07] this context it's important to mention the very first
[00:00:10] thing that clearly indicated what could
[00:00:14] happen. No one, absolutely no one, despite
[00:00:17] the debate being heated, controversial at times,
[00:00:21] and very, very, to put it mildly, ugly,
[00:00:25] mhm, no one disputed the assessment of the situation, no one
[00:00:28] disputed the need for
[00:00:31] intervention in that area. These our proposals,
[00:00:34] however, were smoothly rejected, as you saw.
[00:00:38] And already, perhaps the first concrete
[00:00:41] indication that this is coming soon is something
[00:00:45] that perhaps is not generally known to the public, mhm, because we
[00:00:49] are after the parliamentary
[00:00:53] in mind the debate on these two laws and their proposed amendments,
[00:00:56] very quickly, very quickly at the beginning of July,
[00:01:00] we simply sat down and wrote two new legal
[00:01:03] proposals, where we primarily
[00:01:06] took into account everything, although little was said about the merits,
[00:01:10] but we took into account everything that we considered reasonable
[00:01:13] and necessary in order
[00:01:17] of service. Have people to improve these laws. We added a few more things that we thought
[00:01:21] were necessary, so two complete new legal proposals,
[00:01:25] but with the same, let's say, the same concept, following
[00:01:28] the same idea. Then something very unusual happened
[00:01:32] and I, I would dare to say,
[00:01:34] incorrect. Namely, according to the rules, if these legal
[00:01:38] proposals are technically in order, the Speaker of the Parliament
[00:01:42] must include them in the agenda within 30
[00:01:45] days. The Speaker of the Parliament includes
[00:01:48] all legal proposals that regularly arrive
[00:01:52] on the agenda in a significantly shorter period, after only a few days.
[00:01:56] There is no reason to wait. However, he did not include ours in the agenda.
[00:02:00] In response to our inquiry as to why he did not include it, he
[00:02:04] actually resorted to some
[00:02:07] procedural, some procedural
[00:02:11] we talk about the situation, about trick, saying that he has the right to wait
[00:02:13] 30 days, with the stipulation that those 30 days cease
[00:02:17] to be counted on July 15th when
[00:02:19] the work of the Parliament ends, when the work of the Parliament ends. In other words, our
[00:02:23] legal proposals were put on hold, so that the
[00:02:27] government could, in the meantime, come in with its own. There you go. That's
[00:02:30] approximately that political
[00:02:33] the first, your pension is context. Content-wise,
[00:02:36] as I said, we need to see what
[00:02:38] exactly it says.
[00:02:40] Uh, maybe the most
[00:02:44] important thing
[00:02:46] is that there are a few questions that should
[00:02:50] be addressed first. First of all, to whom do these
[00:02:54] government's proposed amendments apply? The prime minister
[00:02:57] mentions how many? 2000.
[00:03:00] So, it's not clear to whom all of this
[00:03:03] will apply. Several things are particularly important
[00:03:06] here. For example, if these pensions
[00:03:10] are increased, uh,
[00:03:13] a fundamental question is whether they will only be increased
[00:03:17] prospectively, that is, only for those who will be retired,
[00:03:20] or will this increase also apply to
[00:03:24] those who are already retired? That's
[00:03:26] the first. Secondly, there's the question of
[00:03:30] disability pensions, which is not adequately resolved in
[00:03:34] the current regulations, because in fact we need
[00:03:38] to differentiate, we need to differentiate between two types of disability
[00:03:41] pensions. One are those that arose where,
[00:03:45] where, of course, the inability to work, or
[00:03:47] disability, arose as a direct
[00:03:50] consequence of participation in war operations, and the second
[00:03:54] are those disability pensions that arose, so to speak, from
[00:03:57] work, when the veteran returned
[00:04:00] to his job, worked, I don't know, perhaps for many
[00:04:04] years like all citizens, perhaps he ended up in some, some
[00:04:08] health condition that required it, but which is not a direct
[00:04:11] consequence of participation in the war, okay. And the third thing that is very important
[00:04:15] to somehow understand, and we haven't yet
[00:04:19] seen how it's written and how it's conceived, is the question of family
[00:04:22] pensions, and again there are somehow two
[00:04:26] categories, because one are family pensions
[00:04:30] that arose, whose whose,
[00:04:33] whose rights arose
[00:04:36] immediately after the war due to fallen
[00:04:39] veterans in war operations, and the other is, of course,
[00:04:42] what happens in the general population, that is, family
[00:04:46] pensions after the eventual death of
[00:04:50] an insured person, or pensioner. Now, these
[00:04:53] are all a series of questions that these laws need to regulate,
[00:04:57] and it's hard to comment on anything more specifically. Clearly, the
[00:05:00] part that interests me, since it was part of your proposals,
[00:05:04] that moment was interesting to me. You say the current system
[00:05:08] has actually punished those veterans who
[00:05:12] did not go into that privileged pension early, but continued to work
[00:05:16] after the war. How do you think their status
[00:05:20] should be regulated, and are there
[00:05:22] any other actors in Croatia who have pointed out and
[00:05:26] noticed such a
[00:05:30] discrepancy in this particular population?
[00:05:33] Well, so, like this:
[00:05:35] so, when we look at that
[00:05:39] category of veterans, those veterans who went
[00:05:42] into retirement according to general regulations, meaning those who returned to their jobs
[00:05:46] after the war, and the problem with that,
[00:05:50] the problem is, uh, well,
[00:05:53] to put it very simply, the problem is that
[00:05:56] the Law on Croatian Veterans offers them certain
[00:06:00] benefits in terms of pension calculation, mhm, but they
[00:06:03] are not entitled to the pension supplement that the general population has,
[00:06:07] and more or less that somehow balances out,
[00:06:11] and... and the numbers clearly
[00:06:14] show that the average pension of the general population and
[00:06:18] the average pension of that category of veterans who
[00:06:22] continued to work is more or less the same, for more or less the same
[00:06:25] length of service on average, which is about 31 years
[00:06:29] pointed this out before? Well, sporadically, I think, but
[00:06:33] no one organized, no one made an effort to do something
[00:06:36] about it. We were in contact with, I mean,
[00:06:40] all of us in our surroundings... Many of us and our
[00:06:44] families, we have people who
[00:06:47] continued to work after participating in
[00:06:51] the Homeland War. I mean, they didn't ask
[00:06:55] for anything, but we all knew very well what the situation
[00:06:59] was like, and people were more bothered by that feeling
[00:07:02] of injustice, because somehow in the public space it's
[00:07:05] mostly, mostly believed that
[00:07:08] veterans' pensions are high or even very
[00:07:12] high for our circumstances. And that is
[00:07:14] possibly, possibly true for one category
[00:07:17] of veterans, for those who retired immediately after the war, by no means
[00:07:21] for those who continued to work. The fact that
[00:07:24] this announcement comes yesterday to commemorate
[00:07:28] Operation Storm, in the context of this
[00:07:31] ignoring, as you say, of your proposals by
[00:07:34] the Parliament, do you believe
[00:07:37] that there will actually be some change in government
[00:07:40] policy here, or is it still some... uh, perhaps
[00:07:43] more populist approach to this topic? Well, I
[00:07:47] would dare to say that this is largely a forced
[00:07:50] move. As I said, our argumentation, I mean,
[00:07:54] we can discuss, as you asked earlier, we can discuss the
[00:07:58] modality, how to improve the material status of this
[00:08:02] group of veterans, how to intervene in the law
[00:08:05] to increase these pensions, that can be discussed. It seems that the government
[00:08:09] has a different idea than we had in our
[00:08:12] laws, but that is perfectly legitimate. The prime minister announced
[00:08:15] something like a pension supplement, so something that will be,
[00:08:19] how can I say, an integral part of the pension, rather than
[00:08:23] some kind of supplement, all right, modalities can
[00:08:26] be discussed, but I would say
[00:08:29] that this forced move was perfectly clear,
[00:08:33] perfectly clear from all, how can I say,
[00:08:36] all indicators, from our contacts. We went through,
[00:08:39] in our campaign we went through maybe
[00:08:43] 10 or 15 major Croatian cities, everywhere the echo was
[00:08:46] the same, everywhere we received
[00:08:49] extremely, how can I say, extremely strong,
[00:08:52] open, undivided support for the idea
[00:08:56] that this issue needed to be opened, uh,
[00:09:00] the argumentation, as I said, was never
[00:09:03] defeated, and it seems to me that the government had no other choice
[00:09:07] but to, as it unfortunately happens in our
[00:09:11] political milieu, uh, not to
[00:09:14] uh, constructively
[00:09:17] agree to a discussion about a proposal that
[00:09:20] came from the opposition, as it has never done before,
[00:09:23] but to crush that proposal,
[00:09:27] let's say, then quickly repackage it and present
[00:09:31] it as its own. If that government
[00:09:34] proposal announced by Prime Minister Plenković
[00:09:36] is put to a vote, if
[00:09:40] its modality and and the whole story around
[00:09:44] that proposal are, in your
[00:09:47] view, correct, will you support
[00:09:50] it? Well, I think there is no doubt that we will support every
[00:09:54] proposal that goes in that direction. Ultimately,
[00:09:57] we simply believed that it was necessary to do so.
[00:10:01] The other thing is how it will be done. We will, there is absolutely no
[00:10:05] dilemma, be extremely engaged in that
[00:10:08] discussion. When we see the legal text,
[00:10:11] there will probably be an opportunity to talk about it much more
[00:10:15] concretely. If we need to submit
[00:10:18] amendments, or file amendments,
[00:10:21] if we need to do some additional analyzes,
[00:10:25] to propose eventually some corrections,
[00:10:28] but so we don't have that problem, we don't have that
[00:10:32] problem that we would
[00:10:36] take a negative stance towards a proposal
[00:10:39] just because it came from the government.
[00:10:42] So it was with the Law on Reconstruction, so it was with a whole series
[00:10:46] of laws, so it was, of course, with all the other
[00:10:50] previous examples where the government de facto copied some legal proposal
[00:10:54] from the opposition. So, Parliament is not a place where
[00:10:57] one should be stubborn or,
[00:11:00] I don't know, act in defense
[00:11:03] of one's stubbornness or politicize in such
[00:11:07] a way. If, therefore, that proposal goes in the direction we
[00:11:10] believe it should go, the announcement seems, from
[00:11:14] the announcement it seems that it will be so, our support
[00:11:17] will come. Before we move on to the entire
[00:11:20] pension system, I have to ask you
[00:11:23] - How, how do you see
[00:11:26] the political, is it politically
[00:11:30] and fair to
[00:11:33] increase veterans' pensions
[00:11:36] separately as a special category, while there is a segment of citizens
[00:11:39] with full employment history, who receive
[00:11:43] pensions of a few hundred
[00:11:45] euros? That is a very, very
[00:11:48] difficult question, that
[00:11:50] is, of course, a very difficult question.
[00:11:54] Uh, believe me, we specifically thought about that question a lot
[00:11:58] when we were preparing those legal proposals and when we were enacting
[00:12:02] them. The answer is this: both are necessary.
[00:12:05] Uh, I will remind you of the following: in our
[00:12:09] pension system, so when
[00:12:11] we look at all our retirees,
[00:12:14] you have approximately,
[00:12:17] 940,000
[00:12:19] retirees,
[00:12:21] uh, whose pensions are, first of all, who retired according to
[00:12:25] the Pension Insurance Act and whose pensions are determined according to the Pension
[00:12:28] Insurance Act. This is the basic group that we
[00:12:32] most often have in mind when
[00:12:36] the difficult situation of our retirees and about the state of our
[00:12:39] system. Besides them, however, you have another, I don't know,
[00:12:43] 250,000 or something similar,
[00:12:46] uh, retirees who are
[00:12:49] retired in 19 groups
[00:12:53] who are retired according to special regulations,
[00:12:56] or whose pensions are determined according to special regulations. Two of
[00:13:00] these groups are veterans, but of course there
[00:13:03] you have a whole spectrum of various special groups,
[00:13:07] such as, I don't know, former political officials,
[00:13:11] members of parliament, while that
[00:13:14] notorious law on parliamentary pensions was
[00:13:17] in force and so on and so forth. Our position from the beginning
[00:13:21] was the following: in fact, one must specifically
[00:13:24] address the status of, let's say, these basic,
[00:13:27] fundamental groups of pensioners, uh, because, because it
[00:13:31] is, it is the image of the system.
[00:13:34] The status of each of these groups must be resolved separately, and that
[00:13:38] solution must not, should not, by no means, be
[00:13:42] uniform for everyone, because each of these 19 special groups has its
[00:13:46] own specificities, its own reasons why their pensions are
[00:13:50] calculated specially. The real concern is how to increase
[00:13:53] pensions. We believed
[00:13:57] and advocated for it years ago
[00:14:01] in our election programs, in all public appearances, that it is
[00:14:04] generally necessary to raise
[00:14:07] the overall level of these pensions, it is necessary to raise the overall level of these
[00:14:11] pensions beyond those
[00:14:14] regular semi-annual adjustments. Now,
[00:14:17] raising the overall level of these pensions, that
[00:14:20] is
[00:14:22] the question of all questions:
[00:14:25] how? Uh, maybe just this piece of information, so as not
[00:14:29] to burden the conversation too much with numbers,
[00:14:32] but in total,
[00:14:35] for the payment of all pensions this year
[00:14:39] in the Republic of Croatia and the Pension Insurance Institute,
[00:14:42] over 10 billion
[00:14:45] euros are needed, over 10 billion euros.
[00:14:49] That is more than a quarter of our
[00:14:51] budget.
[00:14:55] Of those 10 billion euros, 6 billion are collected from
[00:14:58] contributions, and four must be
[00:15:01] directly, let's say, aided by budget
[00:15:04] money. To raise the pension level by only
[00:15:08] one percentage point, by only one percentage point, which actually
[00:15:12] every individual pensioner will not even feel,
[00:15:15] means 100 million euros annually. It is obvious that this is a very non-trivial
[00:15:19] question. Now there are,
[00:15:22] of course, various modalities. Some things the government has already
[00:15:26] announced, and
[00:15:29] we have some objections and perhaps
[00:15:32] some proposals that would improve
[00:15:36] these measures or follow or
[00:15:39] expand them. One is, of course, the announcement
[00:15:42] of the abolition of taxes on pensions, the other
[00:15:46] is what has now somewhat fallen into the background, but I think it is
[00:15:50] very, very unfairly resolved, that is the question of the right to work after
[00:15:53] retirement. I don't know, we can return to both,
[00:15:57] we can, and generally, of course, there is also the question
[00:16:00] of adjustment. We recently changed the adjustment formula again,
[00:16:03] that is, of course, a question of budgetary possibilities for some
[00:16:07] extraordinary increase in the level of general pensions, I say
[00:16:10] these fundamental groups of retirees. These are some
[00:16:14] key questions and
[00:16:16] uh, by no means, how can I
[00:16:20] say, it would be by no means good to
[00:16:23] address only the issue of pensions of one particular group without
[00:16:27] having
[00:16:30] system as a whole, especially its fundamental, most important
[00:16:34] part. Tell me, did you have anything else to say?
[00:16:38] Taxes and and work from
[00:16:40] retirement.
[00:16:43] Well, let's first take work from retirement. So, that's
[00:16:46] a new thing. We had
[00:16:49] until a year, a year ago, something like that,
[00:16:52] a legal solution according to which
[00:16:55] su
[00:16:57] retirees,
[00:17:00] old-age retirees, were allowed to work up to
[00:17:03] 50% of their working hours
[00:17:06] without their pension payment
[00:17:08] being interrupted.
[00:17:10] Now, demographic trends are what they are, the situation in the
[00:17:14] labor market is what it is, pensions are
[00:17:17] what they are. There was clearly a need to allow retirees,
[00:17:21] or to consider regulating the
[00:17:25] issue of their full-time work, and the
[00:17:28] legislator allowed it. Such a law was passed
[00:17:31] in Parliament. Retirees who are in
[00:17:35] old-age retirement can now work full-time
[00:17:38] and continue working or get re-employed,
[00:17:41] of course, if they want to,
[00:17:45] but, but the way is that they are entitled
[00:17:48] to only half of their pension, and
[00:17:51] they have whatever salary they have, a full salary, they have whatever salary they earn, a salary earned
[00:17:54] plus half of the pension, but only half of the pension. Look, you
[00:17:58] worked until the age of 65, it doesn't matter whether
[00:18:01] your pension came from the first or the second pension pillar,
[00:18:05] especially if it came from the second pension pillar. Even if it came from
[00:18:10] fully earned. Perhaps some
[00:18:14] parameters in the law have changed,
[00:18:17] perhaps contribution rates have changed, perhaps
[00:18:20] calculation formulas have changed, but the fundamental
[00:18:23] agreement remained the same: you work until 65,
[00:18:27] you pay contributions for the pensions of
[00:18:30] current retirees, after 65, your
[00:18:34] pension is due, which is completely
[00:18:37] earned, and there is absolutely no logic
[00:18:41] and no argument that
[00:18:43] if you continue, if you want to, if you can
[00:18:47] work, it doesn't matter if you work because it
[00:18:50] makes you happy or if sheer necessity forces you to, that
[00:18:53] someone will now take half of your pension for the time you work. That
[00:18:57] is absolutely unfair. We
[00:18:59] and not just us, not just our party in Parliament, pointed
[00:19:03] this out with arguments, but there was no understanding, nor were there
[00:19:06] counter-arguments. So, that's something that needs
[00:19:09] to be energetically, energetically changed. That's the first
[00:19:13] thing. The second thing is pension tax. We have been advocating for this
[00:19:16] for at least three or four years, very strongly,
[00:19:19] very energetically, and now it is finally being announced. But again, it seems to
[00:19:23] me we have gone from one extreme to the other.
[00:19:26] The announcement is that taxes on pensions will be completely
[00:19:29] abolished.
[00:19:32] That might not make much sense,
[00:19:34] because it is absolutely necessary
[00:19:38] to abolish taxes on pensions up to a certain
[00:19:41] threshold, up to a certain limit,
[00:19:43] and simply
[00:19:47] uh the financial situation
[00:19:50] of retirees is such that it is completely
[00:19:53] unacceptable for a retiree to now pay tax on, for example,
[00:19:57] 700 euros of pension,
[00:20:01] because 600 euros is
[00:20:05] uh a personal deduction, so a non-taxable part.
[00:20:08] That someone who receives a pension of 650 or 700 euros
[00:20:11] per month pays taxes,
[00:20:15] just as it doesn't make much sense for
[00:20:19] a retiree who has a 3,000 euro pension,
[00:20:21] and there are many
[00:20:24] such, I mean, there aren't many proportionally, but there are
[00:20:28] quite a few, to pay, that is, to no longer
[00:20:31] pay tax on a pension, which is also income.
[00:20:34] A worker with 100 or 1500 euros...
[00:20:37] pays tax on pension. So, that question
[00:20:41] of taxing pensions should, I would say, be resolved
[00:20:44] more subtly, releasing 90-plus percent of
[00:20:48] retirees from that tax.
[00:20:51] But fine-tune the system.
[00:20:55] I would say, we have that tool, and that is called personal deduction, that is
[00:20:59] possible. Fine-tune the system in such a way that
[00:21:02] we actually avoid those obvious injustices, so that the entire
[00:21:06] system, when we look at salaries and pensions
[00:21:09] and income
[00:21:13] from self-employment, is made coherent. This way we
[00:21:17] make piecemeal changes and then
[00:21:20] we create various imbalances and
[00:21:24] significant injustices. And finally, just one more thing
[00:21:28] - generally, the abolition of taxes on the vast majority
[00:21:31] of pensions is necessary and we welcome
[00:21:35] it. We must be aware that over half
[00:21:38] of our retirees will not feel a direct benefit from it,
[00:21:42] unfortunately, because their pensions are lower than 600
[00:21:46] euros, because they are actually lower than that tax
[00:21:50] threshold, and the real question is how to help, how
[00:21:53] to help them.
[00:21:56] We can come back to that. What I would like to talk about now
[00:21:59] is the pillars of the pension system. How
[00:22:03] I understand it, you don't consider the second pillar unimportant,
[00:22:06] you said for it, that's right, you said that it's a kind of personal
[00:22:09] property of the insured and you claimed that it was
[00:22:13] systematically undermined for years
[00:22:17] - as long as it exists.
[00:22:20] Some politicians and analysts advocate
[00:22:23] abolishing the mandatory second pillar and
[00:22:26] transferring all those, right, 20% contributions in
[00:22:30] the second pillar to be transferred to the first. So, from the
[00:22:33] pension contributions, which is generally
[00:22:36] 20% of the gross salary, 15%
[00:22:39] goes to the first pillar and only 5% to the second. So,
[00:22:43] about three quarters of the contributions go to the first pillar,
[00:22:46] first, first five to the second, okay. However, the assets of these
[00:22:50] mandatory pension funds are, of course,
[00:22:54] very large.
[00:22:55] That
[00:22:58] is a big question. I think that it is
[00:23:02] a constant question that naturally has its, how can
[00:23:06] I say, waves in terms of visibility
[00:23:09] in public discourse. Sometimes that question
[00:23:12] fades, then it intensifies
[00:23:15] again, the discussion about it. It's an absolutely
[00:23:18] legitimate question, because it is indeed true
[00:23:22] that we cannot be, overall,
[00:23:25] and
[00:23:27] the beginning was 2002, so, 24
[00:23:30] years, we cannot, overall, be satisfied
[00:23:34] with the performance of that second pillar.
[00:23:37] So, the point is that, the point is that
[00:23:40] that second pillar
[00:23:43] should ensure
[00:23:45] that our
[00:23:48] pensions are higher
[00:23:52] than they would be if we had never introduced
[00:23:55] the second pillar. I mean, that's, that's
[00:23:58] the basic line of the whole
[00:24:01] discussion. So, the second pillar was introduced, and
[00:24:04] the key argument was that the first pillar is unsustainable,
[00:24:08] demographically unsustainable.
[00:24:11] That it is demographically unsustainable is shown by
[00:24:14] the previously cited data that out of
[00:24:17] the necessary 10 billion euros... Only six
[00:24:20] billion euros come from contributions, and as many as four must
[00:24:24] be directly transferred from the budget. So, the
[00:24:27] idea was to actually introduce a second pillar where
[00:24:30] our quarter of our pension
[00:24:34] contributions would be invested, accumulated,
[00:24:38] and ultimately result
[00:24:42] in some, some part, of course, then the pension is in two
[00:24:46] parts, right? Some part of the pension
[00:24:50] that would, that would actually help our overall
[00:24:53] pension be higher than it would have been
[00:24:56] without the second pillar. Currently, the situation is such that it is not
[00:25:00] the case. It is not the case. How do we know it is not
[00:25:04] the case? Well, it is not the case,
[00:25:07] obviously, because our
[00:25:09] legislation
[00:25:12] provides, so
[00:25:15] the possibility that every insured person at the moment when
[00:25:19] they retire
[00:25:21] chooses,
[00:25:24] uh, has the right to choose whether they will receive that, let's say,
[00:25:28] newly designed pension, partly from the first, partly from the second pillar, based on
[00:25:31] their accumulated contributions, or
[00:25:34] whether they will to opt out that
[00:25:38] his money invested in the second pillar returns
[00:25:41] back to the first pillar so that he receives a pension from the first pillar as if
[00:25:45] the second pillar had never
[00:25:47] existed.
[00:25:51] It is a fundamental fact that for the vast
[00:25:54] majority of insured persons this second option is more favorable
[00:25:57] and people, as
[00:26:00] a rule, in a large percentage of cases opt for
[00:26:04] returning completely to the first pillar. Now, the
[00:26:07] situation is somewhat better in terms of the percentage of people
[00:26:11] who choose this two- pillar pension,
[00:26:15] uh, I would say somewhat better
[00:26:18] for one reason that
[00:26:22] is very attractive to our citizens
[00:26:26] and that is that a part of the accumulated funds from the second
[00:26:35] for many people in the situation we are in,
[00:26:39] that some that some, let's
[00:26:42] say, cash of those 20% that you can
[00:26:46] withdraw, okay, means something, hmm, then
[00:26:49] people choose the pension, that combined pension from the first and
[00:26:52] second pillar,
[00:26:54] uh
[00:26:56] uh, to a large extent, statistics show this, so I'm not
[00:27:00] saying this, how can I say, from an impression. "We in the Parliament receive an annual
[00:27:03] report on the work of mandatory pension funds, we
[00:27:07] see the situation, the evidence, we see the statistics, how many
[00:27:11] people chose what and why,
[00:27:14] uh,
[00:27:18] what, what to actually
[00:27:21] say after
[00:27:24] all,
[00:27:26] first of all, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that our second pillar
[00:27:30] in its fullness has not yet come to life
[00:27:33] and I think that
[00:27:37] a fair and complete and comprehensive assessment
[00:27:40] of the second pillar can be
[00:27:44] given, deduced and
[00:27:48] only after those people who
[00:27:51] have been in that combined system from the beginning of their
[00:27:55] working career, employment, start retiring,
[00:27:59] that is not yet the case, in other words, that second pillar in our country has not yet
[00:28:03] reached full maturity, it is still in some experimental phase, so I wouldn't
[00:28:06] say experimental, but let's say in growing up, it has not
[00:28:09] reached its full maturity, it is now in some adolescence,
[00:28:13] 40 years must pass, 40 years must pass, so
[00:28:17] somewhere in 2042
[00:28:20] 45, then we will have all the elements to
[00:28:23] objectively assess
[00:28:26] its full operation, that is the first
[00:28:29] data, allow me to say just one more thing about other important
[00:28:32] data, if we are talking about
[00:28:36] the eventual,
[00:28:38] eventual dismantling of that second pillar, okay, much is
[00:28:42] overlooked, a completely,
[00:28:45] completely clear and undeniable
[00:28:48] fact, that is that this operation is extremely
[00:28:51] non-trivial, perhaps even impossible, due to
[00:28:55] the fact that our accumulated contributions in
[00:28:59] the second pillar are our private property. That's
[00:29:03] what the law says, so, the difference is absolutely
[00:29:06] fundamental compared to the status of our contributions in the first
[00:29:10] pillar and our contributions in the second pillar. Our contributions in
[00:29:13] the second pillar are our private savings, literally
[00:29:16] that's how it should be understood, our private savings with
[00:29:20] the only difference that we do not have the right to dispose of these
[00:29:24] savings before our retirement.
[00:29:27] So, when and if someone advocates for the abolition of the second pillar
[00:29:30] and the accumulation of funds from the second pillar returning to the first
[00:29:34] pillar, that very much overlooks the fact that now
[00:29:37] it is no longer about some transfer from one state fund to another
[00:29:41] state fund, but it is therefore a question
[00:29:44] of disposing of the personal property of each individual
[00:29:48] citizen, and that is something that I think is an extremely
[00:29:51] non-trivial question, it is not clear how that could be done, so
[00:29:55] then speculation, by abolishing the second
[00:29:58] pillar and transferring that money to
[00:30:02] that first... the first pillar, would it be possible
[00:30:06] for that to be one of the models for increasing basic
[00:30:08] pensions? No, the
[00:30:11] thing is, how can I say, the thing is, the thing is much
[00:30:15] more complex, because I think
[00:30:18] in the second pillar, I don't know exactly
[00:30:21] how much is accumulated, 25 billion, don't hold me to
[00:30:23] that, I'm not sure how much money,
[00:30:26] I mean
[00:30:30] hypothetically, hmm. hypothetically, if
[00:30:33] we returned all that money from the second pillar,
[00:30:37] I say, it's impossible, it's impossible, that's our private
[00:30:41] property, but if someone, if
[00:30:43] someone,
[00:30:45] I don't know what word would be appropriate so that it wouldn't be too strong, if someone took
[00:30:49] all that money and put it into the first pillar, then what could happen, pensions from
[00:30:53] the first pillar could increase by many percent, and then what
[00:30:57] next year, what then that year?