The government has established a clear and transparent approach to court-ordered payments for all pensioners

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved a procedure establishing how pension payments and supplements awarded by court decisions will be made from the budget of the Pension Fund of Ukraine (PFU).

Ukraine has accumulated a systemic problem with the enforcement of court decisions regarding pensions. Over the past five years, the number of such decisions has increased more than 26-fold — to 758,000 rulings. The total debt currently amounts to nearly UAH 85 billion. Until now, there has been no unified approach for the state to make payments in compliance with court rulings.

In particular, current payments under court decisions were made immediately, while amounts accrued for past periods were placed in a queue. As a result, as of today, the state has only paid out decisions that came into force before November 20, 2020, causing dissatisfaction among citizens and criticism from international partners, including the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe.

To streamline the situation and ensure uniform, fair, and transparent rules for all, given limited financial resources, the government has adopted a resolution establishing a single procedure for all payments to enforce court decisions — both retrospective (for past periods) and current.

For the first time, the PFU budget will allocate separate expenditures for court-ordered payments, depending on the pension funding source: payments to be made from the state budget (for pensions funded by the state budget) and payments to be covered by pension insurance contributions. A unified approach is introduced for both current payments of recalculated pensions under court decisions and additional amounts awarded by courts for prior periods (so-called retrospective court decisions). Payments to citizens will be made monthly, proportionally to the funds allocated in the Pension Fund budget, delineated between state budget obligations and insurance funds.

"Thanks to the new procedure, citizens with retrospective court decisions will receive regular monthly payments, even if not the full amount immediately. At the same time, everyone will have access to information: the volume of decisions awaiting enforcement and the dynamics of their payment. Expenditures for these purposes will be clearly outlined in the PFU budget. This will create a more transparent, predictable, and civilized system for enforcing court decisions," commented Daria Marchak, First Deputy Minister of Social Policy of Ukraine.

A separate provision of the resolution introduces electronic tracking of all court decisions submitted to pension authorities for enforcement. Information about them will be displayed in the individual’s account on the PFU portal, while aggregated data will be published in an open dashboard format on the PFU website.

The resolution has already come into force, and technical preparations for its implementation are currently underway.

The adoption of the resolution is expected to promote more transparent compliance with European Court of Human Rights rulings — an international obligation of Ukraine as a member of the Council of Europe.