Civil Servants Pension Act and Principle of Legitimate Expectation ─ Centering on Grand Justice Interpretation No. 717

• Main Authors: Shin-Po Liu, 劉世博
• Other Authors: Yin-Chin Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/pv5fjh

碩士 === 中原大學 === 財經法律研究所 === 103 === After Taiwan was included in the review list of developed countries, Taiwan has faced the problems of government budget deficit, aging, and declining birthrate. Therefore, there is an urgent need to fully review civil service retirement system. Before the legal reform, in addition to receiving pension, civil servants could also enjoy favorable interest and end of year benefits after retirement. Compared with laborers, it seems that the country has overly protected civil servants. Since the change of ruling party in 2000, Bian government started to review the overprotection of retired civil servants, and proposed “2006 Reform” in 2006 to restrict the amount of money under favorable interest for retirees with excessively high income replacement ratio. In 2008, after the second change of ruling party, Ma government also pointed out the three major disadvantages of the existing pension system, including “lack of funds, industrial injustice, and inequality in generations.” Ma government’s reform objectives are financial soundness, social justice, generation inclusiveness, and pragmatic moderation.” In addition, Ma government also keeps adjusting the provisions on amount of money under favorable interest. Moreover, during the 2013 budget review, legislators found that, it is unfair that, in addition to pension and favorable interest mentioned above, civil servants also enjoy an annual “end of year benefits.” Executive Yuan had no choice but to change the rules, and restricted the qualifications for obtainment of end of year benefits. More importantly, Examination Yuan submitted the Draft on Civil Service Survivor Relief Act to Legislative Yuan to discuss about the decrease of pension income of civil servants. The main reasons why the said policy reforms were proposed were national financial deficit and generation justice, which are quite reasonable. However, it is uncertain whether relevant reforms violate the basic principles of a country ruled by law, such as legal reservation principle, principle of non-retroactivity, trust protection principle, property rights protection, principle of proportionality, principle of public welfare, and principle of equality. This study centered on Grand Justice Interpretation No. 717 to investigate the problems derived from the decrease of amount of money under favorable interest, and probe into the legal disputes concerning the decrease of pension and restriction on qualification for obtainment of end of year benefits. This study found that, before the reforms, the income replacement ratio of some of the civil servants was indeed too high, which was a burden to national finance to a certain extent. As for the major disputes of reforms, this study focused on the operation of trust protection and legal reservation principle. Although there were generally the same opinions in practice, theoretically, there were significantly different opinions, and the consensus has not been reached. This study proposed the suggestions as follows: It is necessary to set up a reasonable bottom line, and use legislative power for supervision. It is necessary to pay attention to the rationality of source of pension income and the appropriateness of history of pension provision.