State Minister of Labor Kostas Karagounis, speaking on ERTnews’ “Newsroom”, assured that there will be no cut in widow’s pensions.

Referring to some 200,000 beneficiaries of dowry pensions for widowhood, he explained that there is a decision of the CSC which, according to him, has not yet been finalized, but in general confirms a regulation of the Katrougalos law.

As he said, this regulation concerns the way of calculating the national pension for the surviving spouse, noting that the contributory part of the pension remains, while the issue concerns the national pension.

The deputy minister stressed that, based on the ministry’s planning, there will be legislative intervention immediately after the full legalization of the decision, in order to ensure that there are no reductions or refunds of amounts. He also stressed that although only the summary of the decision is available so far, the government is aware of its general content and will proceed to regulate it so that “there will be no cut in widow’s pensions“.

In response to a concern about the possibility of retroactive refunds, he noted that there is no such issue for beneficiaries, insisting that the key message to pensioners is that there will be no reduction, regardless of the time of completion of the net enrolment.

Then, Karagounis also touched on the issue of heavy and unhealthy occupations in the health sector, noting that the government is moving forward with a regulation concerning nurses, nurses’ assistants, ambulance drivers and assistants, as well as rescuers of the NHS and EKAB. He said this is a total of six categories of workers, covering a large number of staff working in particularly difficult conditions.

According to him, the aim of the regulation is to address inequalities that existed until now, as in some cases workers in the same specialty did not enjoy the same rights in terms of heavy and unhealthy work. He stressed that the new provision will ensure equal treatment for all workers in the same conditions.

The Deputy Minister announced that the regulation will be discussed at a forthcoming Cabinet meeting and will be submitted for legislation in the near future, with the aim of being implemented immediately after its publication.

At the same time, he referred to the significant progress in the digitisation of the e-EFKA, noting that a drastic reduction in pension award times has been achieved. He said pensions are now issued in about 41 days on average, compared with about 500 days in the past, while the full digitisation of the files, which include tens of millions of pages. is expected to be completed in 2027.

He noted that the completion of digitisation will allow for even faster pension awards, especially in cases of successive insurance, where significant delays have been observed to date.

In the same context, Karagounis also referred to developments in the labour market, arguing that significant new jobs have been created since 2019 in sectors such as IT, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, logistics and healthcare. As he said, several of these sectors recorded wage increases, especially in highly specialised sectors.

Finally commenting on political developments and the possible establishment of new parties, the deputy minister described the return of Alexis Tsipras as “reheated food”, while on the move of Maria Karystianou, he noted that it will be judged by her positions and political programme. At the same time, he criticized PASOK and Nikos Androulakis, referring to tension and toxicity in the public discourse of the opposition.