New, lower auxiliary pensions issued

The single auxiliary social security fund (ETEAEP) on Friday paid out the first 1,500 auxiliary pensions calculated according to a 2016 law, resulting in their reduction by between 22 and 38 percent compared to previous pensions.

The waiting time at the fund, from the time of retirement to the first payment, exceeds two years.

Those first 1,500 auxiliary pensions mainly concerned pensioners of the former civil servants auxiliary fund (TAEDY), with fund officials saying these were "the easy cases."

The bailout agreement dictates that by next month, ETEAEP will have to issue at least 13,800 auxiliary pensions from applications submitted from January 2015 to December 2016, which is expected to be very difficult.