Greek social security and pension fund for self-employed (OAEE) sent several thousands of notes inviting the self-employed to settle their debts and threatening with enforced confiscation of bank deposits, properties and other assets. What did the self-employed merchants, craftsmen and taxi owners of Thessaloniki do?
No, they didn’t rush to local OAEE offices to settle their debts. They organized a protest outside the headquarters of the agency in north Greece and burned the OAEE notices instead.
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
A new registered self-employed has to pay 250 euro per month for social security contributions. After three years, the monthly payment reaches 400 euro per month – independent from real income.
In Greece of economic recession and stagflation where shops and other businesses close on a daily basis and liquidity is a rare diamond, there not very many owners of a very small or even medium size business that can pay this amount that comes in addition to rent and utility bills, paying taxes in advance and other expenses.
A friend of mine who runs a shop in a not expensive suburb of Athens was telling me “I need 1,500 euro on the first day of the month to cover the minimum of expenses to run my shop.” He will apply to early retirement with reduced pension soon because the money coming in is much less than what he needs to run the shop. In the four years of the crisis, he has already used some 70% of his savings.
PS much to my knowledge if the OAEE insured does not pay for a period of 3 months -I think- he is out from the insurance fund, medical care included.
Yep, this was the main reason why we relocated our company outside Greece. We pay not even half of that amount now and get full medical coverage, we will get full unemployment benefits if we need them and we will get our state pensions when we are 67…
This system was crazy and still is.
By the way, I wonder if we will find the usual stack of letters from OGA on our doorstep. They threw us out a couple of years ago, when they changes the rules about who can participate when living and working in a small village. So we had to go back to TEBE. But OGA still want us to pay them too… Crazy!
it’s so crazy like if you are employee, pay IKA have a side job as free lancer and have to pay TEBE (OAEE) too. when it comes to retirement, they tell you those years you had both IKA & TEBE … well one of them cannot count. happened to a friend : 7 years of lost insurance OAEE contributions