Prague - One of the last relicts of the former regime will lick the dust. The Czech government decided this week to stop paying pensions to Russian citizens.
For years they have had the right to receive the money even if they never worked in the Czech Republic (or Czechoslovakia). All the needed to do was to apply.
Cabinet agreed on unilateral withdrawal of this Czech-Russian accord of reciprocal social security program for their citizens on Wednesday. The withdrawal now has to be approved by the parliament.
Rent without work
Every Russian has now a right to receive a Czech rent automatically when he or she resides in the Czech Republic.
In case the accord's withdrawal pushes through, only those who have paid retirement income insurance for at least fifteen years in the Czech Republic would continue receiving the rent.
Since 1989 the Czech Republic has repeatedly atempted to change or annul this accord, but Russia has never shown interest. Latest attempt took place this year in April, when Czech president Václav Klaus visited Moscow.
"Because of the continuing unpreparedness of the Russian side the agreement hasn't been signed and there are absolutely no signals, that this situation would change," the Ministry of Labour spokesman Jiří Sezemský was quoted saying earlier this year.
The right or the Russian citizens who reside in the Czech Republic to claim pesnions locally stems from the 46-year old contract between the former Soviet Union and former Czechoslovakia.
17 pensioners only
The pension is supposed to reflect each applicant's income at the time of applying for it, be it a Russian living in the Czech Republic or a Czech living in the Russian Federation. The idea behind the contract, written according to the Soviet model, was thatevery citizen should be fully secured in and by the state he lives in.
In the Czech Republic, 22 093 Russians had a legal residence at the end of September 2007, Foreign Police statistics show. According to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, approximately thousand of them are over 60 years old.
When the Czech Republic came into being after the splitting of Czechoslovakia in 1993, other post-Soviet countries like Ukraine or the Baltic republics signed new contracts with it, hence the people from these states have the same rights as Russians.
How many of them would be affected by the government's decision is not clear. According to statistics, there are now over 3000 people from ten of the ex-USSR states living in the Czech Republic, mostly Kazachs (1440).
However, only 17 people from the former Soviet Union have been claiming pensions as of last year, 14 of them from Ukraine. The number of applications could rise, though, as the number of these residents in the Czech Republic increases. Currently, there is over twenty thousand of Ukrainians registered with authorities.
