Pensions in Poland are a real wild west. These are the biggest absurdities

In recent days, Wyborcza.biz described the story of a firefighter who, just before retiring, received a last-minute promotion and a generous raise only to to “inflate” your benefit by up to several thousand zlotys per month. The result is a pension even higher than the salary.

This is a completely legal use of loopholes allowed by current law. Some officers who started their service in the previous century have their pensions determined based on their last salary. Those who entered service later are treated differently.

Pathologies of the Polish system

We ask an expert how it works. – This is something from a very long time ago. This is how the general pension system used to work. There was no way to prove the amount of one's earnings, so the pension was calculated based on the last salary. Later this period was extended to a year, then ten, until we finally reached the mechanism that works today. That is your pension depends on what you have accumulated throughout your working life. This rule was supposed to apply to all officers, even those accepted into service since 1999, explains Dr. Lasocki.

However, he quickly adds that the changes were resisted by representatives of the uniformed services for a long time. For many years, their privileges were even greater. Those who started service before 2013 they can still retire after just 15 years of service. Regardless of age.

Effect? Today, we already have hundreds of thousands of uniformed pensioners in Poland. The Ministry of Interior and Administration does not have the latest data, but the data from 2024 show that The average age of retirement in the uniformed service is 47and in Poland at that time there were over 173,000. such people.

See also: Uniformed pensions. The whole truth about benefits for services

If the pace from recent years continues, then It can be safely estimated that today the number of uniformed pensioners is around 200,000. people. For comparison, the armed forces number just over 210,000. people (including territorial defense troops).

The “newer” ones have it a bit worse, because not only do they have to have worked for at least 25 years, but there is also an age requirement – at least 55 years. This is still 10 years (in the case of men) faster than “ordinary” employees.

The injustice of the system

Years of changes and confusion in pension privileges have resulted in a mess today, not only from the point of view of the entire system, but also within its individual “subsystems”.

— Some of the officers, the relatively younger ones, may combine a police or military pension with a general pension from ZUS. The older ones do not have such a chance, but their years of civilian work also count towards their pension. Effect? Both of them often feel aggrieved – explains Dr. Tomasz Lasocki from the Warsaw University of Technology.

He also calls for finally taking the system seriously and starting a thorough reform. The expert is a supporter of “involving” everyone into the general pension system.

— I do not deny certain professions the right to premium preferences, earlier or more advantageously calculated pensions. It is often hard service or work, incomparable to an ordinary job or running a company. But everyone knows that serving the servants is unequal and often in one room, desk to desk, an “officer” and an “ordinary employee” are sitting together. They do practically the same job, and one is entitled to early retirement and the other is not – claims.

An assistant professor at the Faculty of Administration and Social Sciences at the Warsaw University of Technology emphasizes that currently every fifth Pole of working age has different rules for contributions and pensions.

Covering all groups in one system would, in his opinion, provide greater transparency and opportunity conversations about who should be given more privileges under certain regulations and who should be given fewer or none at all.

See also: How much do you have to earn for your pension to amount to PLN 5,000? Specific amounts

This is the most privileged group in terms of retirement

Dr. Lasocki points to gross systemic injustice. — First of all, the amount of benefits is inadequate to the extent to which we participate in financing the system, he claims.

And he gives some examples. — The uniformed service is, of course, a group in which this scale of benefits is very visible. Officers do not pay contributions and are also entitled to an early, usually quite high, pension, he says.

However, in his opinion, the services are not the only ones. — From the point of view of the system as a whole the largest group of privileged people are entrepreneurs – says Dr. Lasocki.

How does he argue this? Firstly, there are much more of them than officers or farmers combined. That's nearly two million people.

– And 99 percent. of them pay very small pension contributions, on average calculated from an amount lower than the minimum pension – regardless of their real income. Years later the rest of society will finance subsidies to their minimum pensions – says our interlocutor.

Full-time employee with With an average salary, he or she pays twice as much in contributions as an entrepreneur earning tens of thousands of zlotys a month. And yet it is from this money that the current functioning of the Social Insurance Fund is maintained.

— In my opinion, the rule should be simple: we bear the contribution burden adequate to our capabilities, and in the future we receive benefits adequate to the needs measured by the previous contribution to the fund. In other words, let the system be truly insurance-based. For this to work, we need to look at it holistically. Even on a European scale, says Dr. Lasocki.