The Pensions General Box (CGA) this month notifies pensioners who received pensions above the legal value on the amount to be returned, explaining that the error was parameterization rather than interpretation of the law.
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08/10/2026
by
Lusa
A Pensioners who received pensions above the legal value on the amount to be paid back this month, refusing to have done a “reinterpretation of the law”, but rather a “parametrization error” in the calculation.
“The CGA has already informed these pensioners of the error in the calculation of their pensions”, reads in a clarification note released today, according to which “the deadline is in progress to pronounce themselves at a prior hearing”, after which they will be “analyzed their responses and then in October, they will be notified of the total net value to be restored and the modalities they can choose for this replacement”.
According to details, the beneficiaries of the nearly 3,000 pensions concerned may choose to make the voluntary payment of a Single Payment Document (SPD) that will be sent to them (having 30 days to do so after receipt of the letter) or to return the amount concerned by compensation to the pension(s) of the following month(s), and suffice to do so that they do not liquidate the DUC and do not exceed the monthly deduction 30% of the net amount of the pension to which it is applied.
A third option will be, during the period of voluntary payment, to require the CGA to pay the amount to be recovered in instalments by December 2027 and the value of each monthly instalment may not be less than 5% of the total amount concerned.
If the payment of each instalment of the amount to be repaid is made within the respective period, “refunds are not subject to interest on late payment”, he adds.
This clarification arises after it was reported on Wednesday that the CGA will correct 2,937 pensions awarded between May and August this year, after having detected an error in the calculation that led to them being fixed above the amount provided by the law.
On average, pensioners will receive less than EUR 93.31 per month, with the Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho, informed that the amounts paid more will have to be restored.
The case led the Left Block to ask the Ministers for Finance and Labour for explanations, and Mr Figueiredo objected that it was a mistake, but rather a mere change of interpretation of the law, considering that the reduction in the amount of pensions already allocated is not legal.
In today’s note, the CGA ensures, however, that “there has been no reinterpretation of the law regarding the calculation of pensions”: “What happened was that, in May of this year, the last practical effects of the 2005 reform were felt for the first time,” he explains.
He explains that “in the light of this reform, the part of the service time provided after 2005 by a subscriber registered in the CGA until 1993-08-31 which exceeds 40 years, when added to the service time counted until 2005, is not counted in the calculation of the second instalment of the pension of these workers [...], without prejudice to other legally provided purposes, in particular for the benefit of the pension”.
Thus, “it was in May 2026 that, for the first time, a CGA subscriber could count on 21 years of effective service after 2005, triggering the practical implementation of one of the dimensions of the 2005 reform.”.
However, according to the CGA, “the information system developed at the time did not take on the impact of this legislative amendment, having considered in the calculation of the annual pension training rate the time required by the law to exclude”.
This parameterization error then led to retirement pensions in this universe “to reach more than 90% of the last monthly remuneration, in some cases more than 100%, which – in the light of the regime in force in the CGA for more than 20 years – is something that no worker can receive, not even through the mechanism of the bonus of the pension for work beyond the moment he reaches the conditions of voluntary retirement, because this bonus has a ceiling of 90% of the last monthly remuneration”.
Also according to the CGA, this error affected retired pensioners between May and August 2026 who met three cumulative conditions: They were enrolled in the CGA until 31 August 1993, retired with more than 40 years of service and had at least 20 years of service at the end of 2005.
“ We are talking about people with long careers in the public administration, whose average monthly pension after correction is about 2,400 euros,” says the Pensions General, stressing that these pensioners “received pensions above legal value for a few months.”.