When Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a €400 net payment for pensioners at the Thessaloniki International Fair on September 5, the details were scant. Even when the Minister of Finance, alongside his deputies, elaborated on the measure the following day, there was no mention of where the funding was coming from.
What was made clear was the scope of the change. The existing annual payment to pensioners, previously €300 net, rises to €400 net, and eligibility widens to cover all pensioners over 65, adding roughly 270,000 new recipients and bringing the total to about 2.2 million people. According to reporting by TA NEA, the measure is projected to cost €888 million for its 2.22 million beneficiaries, which include 1.9 million pensioners and more than 300,000 people with disabilities and uninsured elderly residents who receive support through OPEKA, Greece’s welfare and social solidarity agency.
The bill for that, according to ENYPEKK, an independent association of scientists, traces back to a much smaller group of pensioners. Rather than describing the €888 million as a dividend from economic growth, ENYPEKK argues the funding effectively comes from the EAS contributions paid by 440,000 pensioners. EAS, short for the Pensioners’ Solidarity Contribution, is a separate deduction withheld from pensions above a certain monthly threshold, on top of ordinary income tax, meaning the pensioners who pay it are taxed twice on the same income.
Who is left out
The expanded benefit does not reach everyone. More than 400,000 lower income pensioners and orphans under 65 are excluded from the €400 payment, even as the pool of recipients grows to include all pensioners over 65 regardless of income or assets.
A 2024 fix that helped almost no one, group says
EAS traces back to legislation from Greece’s first bailout memorandum, and pensioners’ groups have pushed for years to have it scrapped. Instead, ENYPEKK says, the current government kept the contribution in place and gave it firmer legal footing through a 2024 law (5162/2024). The law raised the thresholds that define each of the eight EAS withholding brackets, in step with pension increases, effective January 1, 2025, rather than removing or lowering the contribution itself.
The federation says that change did little for the people actually paying it. Of the 440,606 pensioners subject to EAS withholding, 346,000 saw no benefit at all in 2025 and kept paying the same amount or more, while the remaining 93,606 either paid less than in 2024 or stopped paying entirely. ENYPEKK calls the 2024 law a hollow gesture toward the pensioners still footing the bill.
Citing the explanatory report that accompanied the 2026 state budget, the federation says the numbers get worse this year. Pensioners subject to EAS are set to pay more in 2026 than in prior years. According to reporting by TA NEA, this means that for another year, the government has overlooked the 440,000 pensioners burdened by the memorandum-era levy, who continue paying both ordinary income tax and the separate EAS contribution on the same pension income.”
A court date that could reshape the levy
The next major turn comes on October 7, 2026, when Greece’s Court of Audit, the country’s highest audit court, will hear a pilot case that could decide the future of EAS. The question before the court is how the contribution should be calculated. Under the current system, once a pensioner’s income crosses the threshold, EAS is withheld from the entire pension, not merely from the amount above that threshold.
Legal experts and pensioners’ representatives argue the levy should work more like income tax brackets, applied only to the amount exceeding the cutoff. Under that approach, a pensioner receiving €2,000 a month would have EAS withheld from just €532 of it, with the first €1,468 exempt, rather than the current system, which applies the deduction across the full amount.
If the court sides with pensioners, legal circles cited by TA NEA expect the government would be forced to redesign the entire EAS framework to reduce the burden on the 440,000 people currently paying it. A ruling against them would leave the current structure, and the double taxation critics describe, in place.”
How the contribution is calculated
For 2026, EAS applies to primary pensions, or combined primary pensions, above €1,468 a month. If the threshold is indexed by 2.6 percent as expected, it would rise to €1,506 starting January 1, 2027. Under the adjusted scale, withholding rates would run from 3 percent on the portion of pensions between €1,506 and €1,829, up through 14 percent on amounts above €3,767, in eight separate brackets.
Source: TA NEA
