Act to amend the Law on Police and Border Guards, the Law on Emergency Services and the Law on Amendments to the Law on Defense Forces and Other Laws
Estonia · Riigikogu · 3 December 2018
The development of the bill is due to the need to organize the hiring of the Deputy Director General of the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) more flexibly than before and the promotion of the service ranks of police officers. It is also desired to give the director general of the PPA the right to authorize the appointment of protected persons and the methods of carrying out their protection, to change the institution responsible for calculating and paying out the police pension, and to ensure on-call time for rescue workers application. For the sake of legal clarity, the implementation provision for increasing the pension of rescue workers is supplemented. The Rescue Service Act specifies the rules for determining the state retirement pension of a rescue worker, which are valid until March 1, 2023. According to the current procedure, a rescue worker's retirement pension is granted on the basis of the State Pension Insurance Act. In addition, the Rescue Service Act provides for an increase in the old-age pension by 10-50 percent, depending from the length of service as a rescue worker (from 10 years). In practice, the question has arisen as to whether a person who has the required length of service in the rescue service, but whose retirement age arrives after March 1, 2023, will miss out on the pension increase. According to the draft, the person would retain the right to receive an increase in the old-age pension. The bill also provides for the right to receive an increase in the rescue worker's old-age pension also for people who were at the time of the law's entry into force (on March 1 2008) in the rescue service, but who has since left the service and does not retire from the rescue service. According to the current procedure, the rescue worker's state old-age pension is determined and paid upon termination of employment as a rescue worker. Until the end of 2017, the law was interpreted in such a way that only the rescue worker who retires directly from the rescue service can receive an increase in the rescue worker's retirement pension. According to the draft, those rescue workers who do not retire directly from the rescue service will also receive an increase in the rescue worker's old-age pension, if the conditions for receiving a pension are met. This concerns those who were in the rescue service when the law entered into force and who have the necessary length of service in the rescue service to increase their old-age pension. The increase will also be paid retroactively to those who have not yet received an increase in their old-age pension calculated. The amendments remove from the Police and Border Guard Act (PPVS) the restriction that police officers are not paid a special pension while serving in the post and amend the Police and Border Guard Act (PPVS) in this regard. According to the forecasts of the Police and Border Guard Board, 1,235 police officers will retire between 2019 and 2025, and one way to solve the problem is to abolish the ban on receiving police pension and continue to work in the police service.