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A June 1997 decision by the Supreme Court of Appeal in Greece, affecting mainly public servants, imposes new conditions on the provision of family benefits, which until now had been granted to only one of the marriage partners.
Until recently, under the terms of Law 1505/1984 (Official Bulletin [FEK], 3 December 1984) which regulated the pay scale of public servants, family benefits for employees, including marriage and family allowances, were paid to only one of the two marriage partners when both were working in the public administration and in the broader sectors of public service and enterprise.
However, Law 2470/1997 (Official Bulletin [FEK], 21 March 1997), which introduces a new pay scale for public servants - and in particular article 12 - imposes new restrictions on the payment of family benefits: it extends the prohibition of payments to both partners, even when one of them is working in the private sector.
On 3 June 1997, the plenary session of the Supreme Court of Justice (decision 42/96) ruled that both marriage partners are entitled to family benefits and declared Law 1505/1984 to be unconstitutional. The restrictive conditions of article 11, section 5, have been ruled unconstitutional because they contravene the fundamental principle of "equal pay for work of equal value" enshrined in articles 4 and 22 of the Constitution. According to the decision of the plenary session - which in addition to the Constitution invoked a number of international conventions and EC Directives - family benefits constitute income and as such must not be paid out in a discriminatory fashion.
Although much publicity has been given to the controversial provision of article 11 in the past, it is the first time that it has been examined by the Supreme Court of Justice and with such important consequences. The case reached the Supreme Court following an appeal lodged by the National Bank of Greece against a decision of the Court of Appeal of Athens which ruled that both marriage partners are entitled to family benefits.
Apart from vindicating the couple of public servants who had appealed against the bank, the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY) stresses that this decision gives legal support to the demand for the payment of family benefits to both spouses, for which ADEDY has been fighting on behalf of all public servants, with repeated requests to the Ministry of Finance for a review. Furthermore, ADEDY has asked the Government to reform the related provisions of Law 2470/1997 and to make back payments of family benefits, which are estimated at approximately GRD 60-65 million over the last five years.
It should be noted that the Council of State had ruled in an earlier decision that family benefits are purely allowances and that, as such, only one of the spouses should be entitled to them. It is therefore possible that the Ministry of Finance will delay the back payments of family benefits by invoking the divergent decisions of the two Supreme Courts until the case has been referred to the Special Jurisdiction Supreme Court (Anotato Idiko Dikastirio) for a final judgment.