DRAFT RESOLUTION NO. 15 /XI

It recommends the Government to monitor the application of the factor of

sustainability in the determination of the amount of pensions, so as

prevent the occurrence of socially unfair consequences for the

pensioners

Exhibition of Motives

The sustainability of the public social security system is a

unquestionable imperative.

The increasing longevity of the Portuguese is one of the main factors that

put in check the sustainability of that system, in general and of the

pension system that it behaves, in particular.

This concern, inherent in the generality of public systems of

European social security, has had answers that vary from country to

country.

In Portugal, through Law No. 4/2007, of January 16, untried to give

a response to these challenges, inter alia, through the creation of the

sustainability factor.

Enshrined in Article 64 of that Social Security Bases Act, the

sustainability factor translates into a relationship between the value of the pension

and the evolution of the average life expectancy.

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It is an innovative and pioneering relationship in the legal regime of the

public social security system in Portugal and Europe, which, by the way

still very recent, demands aturated technical studies, a lot of weighting and

gradualism in their application, in order to avoid the occurrence of

overly penalizing consequences or even deeply

inmages.

The risk referred to is there if we consider that, if the factor of

sustainability translated, in 2008, into a reduction in pensions in

0.56%, already in 2009 pensions will be reduced by 1.32%, more than double

in just one year.

It matters to have present that the first vocation of a security system

social is to promote the fair and equitable distribution of resources,

promoting cohesion and social solidarity and by dogging the situations of

poverty and social precariousness.

It becomes therefore urgent to reanalyze the impacts of the factor of

sustainability. Not to repeal it, but to monitor its

values, their application and effects, preventing injustices and

iniquities, the possible occurrence of which cannot currently be ignored.

This follow up is particularly instant, when the reality

may be bucking the forecasts that the Government has put forward in the

"Report on the Sustainability of Social Security", annex to

Proposed State Budget Bill for 2007, where, through the

Table A3.2, it was mentioned that the sustainability factor would only translate

in reduction of expenditure on pensions from 2015 and in that year, the

reduction would be 0.1% of GDP.

In this context, it is therefore necessary to proceed to a serious work,

meticulous and transparent monitoring of the consequences of the

application of the sustainability factor, all the more so as the crisis in which

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Portugal finds itself dipped has caused and causes still deep

negative consequences in the income of the Portuguese.

Thus, in the legal and the regimentally in force, the Assembly of

Republic resolves to recommend to the Government:

1. What to follow and monitor the application of the factor of

sustainability provided for in Article 64 of Law No. 4/2007, 16 of

January, with a view to preventing and acauteling excessive impacts on the

determination of the amount of pensions in a time when they are

strongly aggravated the living conditions of the Portuguese;

2. May send, immediately, to the Assembly of the Republic of the studies

predictions that served as a support to the introduction of the factor of

sustainability so as to allow to interpret and accompany the

deviations verified as well as validate the topicality of the

assumptions that served him on the basis.

Lisbon, November 20, 2009

The Deputies of the PSD,