The European Court of Human Rights set a legal precedent in its decision reached in the case related to private pension funds. The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights has recently released its decision in which it declared a Hungarian individual’s petition filed in relation to the reform of the Hungarian private pension system inadmissible. The European Court of Human Rights will in the future reject all petitions on the same subject-matter without further investigation.

Based on the facts of the case, Hungarian-Serbian dual citizen E.B. was required to join a private pension fund at her first employer in 2008 in accordance with the legislation in force at the time. When the amendments made to the pension legislation terminated the two-pillar mandatory pension system in 2010 and allowed citizens the choice between the private and the state pension schemes, the applicant decided to opt for membership of the private pension scheme. As, due to statutory changes, pension contributions payable by private pension fund members were required to be transferred to the state scheme, rather than to the individual private pension funds, the applicant filed a petition with the European Court of Human Rights because, in her opinion, her property rights were infringed.

After a review of the Hungarian legislative amendments related to the reform of private pension funds, the Strasbourg court established that the applicant’s contributions made either to a private pension fund or to a state fund equally made her eligible for future pension payments and there had therefore been no interference with any of her rights.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)