The legislator can "cool down" the automatic revaluation of high-value pensions and impose a solidarity levy on them, provided that it observes the constitutional principles of reasonableness and proportionality, also with regard to the duration of the measure.
This is what the Constitutional Court established with sentence no.
234 filed today, deciding on the issues of constitutional legitimacy raised by the Court of Milan and by some regional judicial sections of the Court of Auditors regarding the measures to contain social security expenditure laid down by the 2019 budget law for large pensions.
The prediction of the five-year duration of the levy was rejected by the Constitutional Court.
In the opinion of the Council, the three-year horizon must not be exceeded.
In particular, as regards the solidarity contribution, the Constitutional Court observed that this measure, "aimed at pursuing the aforementioned three-year objectives within the pension system, does not violate the principles of reasonableness and proportionality and is constitutionally tolerable as it operates according to a criterion of progressivity and in any case without prejudice to the minimum annual payment of € 100,000 gross ".
With reference to the maximum duration of the measure, the Constitutional Court, however, considered "the five-year duration of the levy unreasonable due to disproportion".
This duration - notes the Palazzo della Consulta press release - is excessive compared to the ordinary three-year projection of the state budget and the extension over time of the objectives pursued by the measure, as well as misaligned with respect to the time limit of the limiting intervention of equalization , although provided for in the same budget law ".