Head of constitutional court: Decision on pension law will not lead to significant increase of state expenses

The head of the Czech Republic’s Constitutional Court, Pavel Rychetský, has said in an interview in Saturday’s edition of the daily Právo that the court’s recent decision regarding pension calculation would most likely not lead to a significant increase of state expenses. Mr. Rychetský said that the court ruling only affects about 8000 of the country’s three million recipients of pensions. Finance Minister Eduard Janota previously said that the change in pension law, which is to take effect in 2011, would lead to added state expenses of tens of millions of crowns. The Constitutional Court ruled that the current calculation scale for pensions of higher-income groups was unconstitutional.