The accrued pension of a former SBU employee was over 46 thousand UAH, and after applying government coefficients, the payment decreased by 16 thousand.
On May 20, the Supreme Court adopted a resonant decision in case No. 320/2229/25, which may have a significant impact on thousands of military pensioners and other recipients of special pensions. This is reported by Sudovo-Yurydychna Gazeta, the PromPolitInform portal reports.
The court expressed its opinion on the application of government coefficients, which in 2025 actually reduced the payment of pensions assigned in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On Pension Provision for Persons Discharged from Military Service and Certain Other Persons”. This was reported by the Labor and Employment Inspectorate of the Dnipro City Council.
At the beginning of 2025, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution dated 01/3/2025 No. 1 “On determining the procedure for paying pensions to certain categories of persons in 2025 during martial law”, which introduced a mechanism for limiting the payment of so-called “high” special pensions.
If the pension exceeded 10 subsistence minimums for persons who lost their ability to work, reducing coefficients from 0.5 to 0.1 were applied to the amount of the excess.
In practice, this meant a real reduction in payments.
The plaintiff, a former employee of the Security Service of Ukraine, had an accrued pension of more than 46 thousand UAH. After applying government coefficients, the actual payment decreased to about 29.7 thousand UAH. Thus, the pensioner lost more than 16 thousand UAH every month.
The Supreme Court concluded that the Cabinet of Ministers does not have the right to change the conditions of pension provision for military pensioners by adopting resolutions. The Court emphasized that the Law of Ukraine No. 2262-ХІІ directly provides: changing the conditions and norms of such pension provision is possible only by amending the law itself.
Separately, the Supreme Court drew attention to the important problem of conflict of laws.
The Cabinet of Ministers justified its actions by Article 46 of the Law on the State Budget for 2025, which allowed the application of appropriate coefficients.
However, the Court recalled the established position of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine:
the law on the State Budget cannot change other laws;
cannot narrow the rights established by special laws;
does not have a higher legal force compared to other laws.
In this case, the special law is Law No. 2262-ХІІ, and therefore its norms have priority.
In fact, the Supreme Court applied the classic principle of law: a special law takes precedence over a general one (lex specialis derogat generali).
One of the key arguments of the Cabinet of Ministers was the need to save budget funds during martial law.
However, the Supreme Court noted:
the right to social protection is guaranteed by Article 46 of the Constitution of Ukraine;
the Presidential Decree on the introduction of martial law did not provide for restrictions on this right;
even if certain social rights may be temporarily restricted, such a restriction should be established by law, not by a government resolution.
In addition, the Supreme Court supported the conclusions of the previous instances not only regarding the content of the resolution, but also regarding the procedure for its adoption.
The Supreme Court noted that the draft document was not sent to trade unions and employers’ associations, public consultations were not held, and proper public discussion was not ensured.
The Supreme Court upheld the decisions of the previous instances.
