Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2007, published 97th ILC session (2008)

Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102) - Serbia (Ratification: 2000)

The Committee notes the information given in the report and the reply of the Government to its previous direct request. It would be glad if the next report would also contain information on the application of Articles 10, 11 and 12 of Part II of the Convention, Articles 15–18 of Part III and Articles 35–38 of Part VI, which is still missing, as well as copies of the Law on social security and social policy of the Republic of Serbia, the Law on employment and unemployment insurance, the General Act on the national employment service and the Law on financial support for family with children.

Part X (Survivors’ benefit). In reply to the Committee’s previous direct request, the report indicates that, according to articles 71(1) and 72 of the Pension and Disability Law, survivors’ pension for the standard beneficiary (a widow with two children) represents 90 per cent of the old-age or disability pension to which the breadwinner would have been entitled at the moment of death; the minimum base for calculating the survivors’ pension is the old-age pension which the deceased would have received after 20 years of insurance. The minimum survivors’ pension is paid to the survivors of the breadwinner who has completed a minimum qualifying period of five years of insurance. While the report does not provide exact calculation of the replacement level of the survivors’ benefit, it refers to Article 65 of the Convention stating that this level will exceed the minimum level of 40 per cent of the wage of the skilled manual male employee determined under this Article. The Committee would like the Government to confirm this statement by including in its next report statistical data for the same time period on the amount of the average wage in Serbia, the wage of the skilled manual male employee selected under paragraph 6 of Article 65 of the Convention, the amount of the old-age pension to which such an employee would be entitled after 20 years of insurance, and the amount of the survivors’ benefit paid to the widow with two children in case her late husband has completed at the moment of his death a period of 15 years of insurance contributions. Please note that according to paragraph 3 of Article 63 of the Convention, in the schemes where the qualifying period is reduced to only five years of contributions, as in Serbia, the minimum replacement level of the survivors’ benefit required by the Convention is 30 per cent of the reference wage determined under Article 65 or 66. The fact that Serbian legislation fixes the minimum base for calculating the survivors’ pension permits the Government to have recourse also to Article 66 of the Convention, provided that the minimum survivors’ pension for the standard beneficiary would attain 30 per cent of the reference wage of an ordinary adult male labourer.

[The Government is asked to reply in detail to the present comments in 2008.]