Krzysztof Rybinski. Photo: PR

One of Poland’s top liberal economists and fierce critic of the current government’s fiscal policy has announced that he is preparing for class action against the proposed pension reform bill.

“We are preparing the framework by which a class action concerning the [pension reform] can be launched,” economist and former World Bank consultant Krzysztof Rybinski stated, Wednesday.

According to Rybinski, a website billed to go online in the coming days is to collect signatures from citizens against the governmental legislation, although the class action will only be taken to court if the Constitutional Tribunal deems the legislation is not in line with Poland’s constitution.

“This is about protecting the interests of citizens who will lose out because of the decision [to implement the reform], and the money lost as a result,” Rybinski underlined.

Rybinski, who was also deputy head of Poland’s central bank, added that it may be a number of months before the Constitutional Tribunal passes its verdict on the matter, and “[only] then will we be ready to file the class action of thousands of Poles in order to claim their rights and compensation.”

Rybinski believes that the president should hand over the draft legislation to the Constitutional Tribunal, “because if a former chairman of the […] Tribune says it breaks not one, but many paragraphs of the Constitution, then there is a problem.”

The comments come after an announcement from Presidential Advisor Tomasz Nalecz, who said on Tuesday that President Komorowski should sign the reform package by tomorrow, Thursday.

Poles currently put pension contributions into both the state insurance company ZUS, and a private pension fund of their choice, after reforms to the pension system came into force in the late 1990s.

The funds paid into the state system are used for those already on pension. The contributions put into private funds are to be used by workers who retire in the future.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said he hopes to gradually increase the amount put into private funds to 3.5 percent by 2017.

The plan is deigned to cut borrowing needs by 12 billion zloty (3 billion euro) this year and 190 billion zloty by 2020, Tusk said in March, cutting the budget deficit from 7.9 percent to 6 percent of GDP this year. (jb)

Source: TVN24/PAP