In opinion of Rita Tamašunienė, the chairwoman of the EAPL parliamentary fraction, this decision was taken by them first of all because of the awareness of the situation in which majority of the Lithuanian population lives.
'We do not have a moral right to increase salaries for ourselves, knowing the conditions in which other people live,' stated Rita Tamašunienė.
According to Tamašunienė, from the very beginning of the discussions regarding the budget 2014, the deputies of the Polish party were speaking for including the measures aimed at the compensation of pensions that were not paid during the economic crisis.
'More than 1 million litas is needed for the repay of deducted pensions. We know that it is not easy but we can do it step by step by paying an additional amount of money each month. This is how the state would be able to settle it down and to repay the debt for the citizens. Otherwise, the behaviour of the state towards its citizens would be simply unfair,' the deputy concluded.
Lithuania was the only state that, instead of looking for ways of overcoming crisis during the ruling of conservatives in 2009, drastically decreased the salaries of retirees, pensioners, socially supported people and public sector employees. Paradoxically, representatives of the former coalition of liberals and conservatives, that de facto made the mess, nowadays are now seemingly trying to defend people who were wrongfully treated.
The act of law on the salary cuts for the public sector employees which was adopted by the former ruling coalition, would expire on 31rd December 2014.
Meanwhile the Constitutional Court had created a precedent for the reinstatement of decreased salaries, but only for the functionaries of the highest level, for instance for judges and parliamentary deputies. It proclaimed that salaries were decreased illegally so they shall be reinstated to the pre-crisis level. In the thought of proclamation of the Court, while reinstating the settled level of the salary for one group of public sector employees, the other group cannot be excluded. That would be contradictory to the Constitution.
'We declare, that increase of salaries, as the crisis is over and there are some possibilities, should be started from the lowest-level public sector employees. They are mostly young professionals, well educated, having a family and whose earnings can be compared to minimal payments of the unqualified workers,' explained Rita Tamašunienė.
As Tamašunienė said, during the discussion of deputies from the ruling coalition, the decision was taken that before the 1st May 2014, a regulation should be developed by the Ministry of Social Security and Labour according to which retirements would be compensated with the budget surplus.
According to the chairwoman of the parliamentary EAPL fraction, establishing resources on social security benefits in the next year budget for the people that are threatened by social exclusion would not only make an influence on improving quality of their lives but would also contribute to an equalization of social justice.
Irena Mikulevič