19 September 2025

On 17 September 2025, at the public part of its plenary session in the form of written proceedings, the Second Senate deliberated the case upon the constitutional complaint of Pavlo Nevmerzhytskyi.

During the plenary session, the Judge-Rapporteur in the case, Judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Vasyl Lemak, presented the content of the constitutional complaint and the applicant’s arguments.

The Judge-Rapporteur informed that Pavlo Nevmerzhytskyi had appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to review of the constitutionality of Article 8.2 of the Law of Ukraine “On the State Budget of Ukraine for 2024” No. 3460-ІХ dated 9 November 2023 (hereinafter, “Law  No. 3460”). This provision sets the minimum wage to be used as a calculation base for payments under court decisions at 1600 hryvnias.

The content of the constitutional complaint and attached to it materials indicate the following.

Mr. Nevmerzhytskyi. is a non-working pensioner, registered with the Main Department of the Pension Fund of Ukraine in Zhytomyr Region (hereinafter, the “Department”). He has the status of a person affected by the Chornobyl disaster and resides in a settlement classified as a guaranteed voluntary resettlement zone.

In 2018, Pavlo Nevmerzhytskyi applied to the Zhytomyr District Administrative Court with a claim against the Department. In particular, he requested the Department to calculate and pay him an additional pension (“pension supplement”) as a non-working pensioner residing in a contaminated zone, in the amount defined by Article 39 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Status and Social Protection of Citizens Affected by the Chornobyl Disaster” No. 796-XII dated 28 February 1991 as amended (hereinafter, “Law No 796”), equal to two minimum wages established by the Law on the State Budget of Ukraine for the relevant year. The court granted his claims.

To enforce the above-mentioned court decision, the Department recalculated the applicant’s pension and, relying on Article 8.2 of Law No. 3460, applied the minimum wage as a calculation base for payments under court decisions at the level of 1600 hryvnias.

Disagreeing with this, in 2024 Pavlo Nevmerzhytskyi filed an application under Article 383 of the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine with the Zhytomyr District Administrative Court. He requested to declare unlawful the actions of the Department taken to execute the court decision, which led to a reduction of his pension as of 1 January 2024, the unlawful recalculation of his pension for the period from 1 January to 30 November 2024, and to annul the Department’s decision of 23 November 2024 on the pension recalculation.

The Zhytomyr District Administrative Court, by its decision left unchanged by the decision of the Seventh Administrative Court of Appeal, dismissed the application of Pavlo Nevmerzhytskyi. The Supreme Court refused to initiate the cassation proceedings as the cassation complaint was filed against court decisions that are not subject to cassation appeal.

According to the applicant, the contested provision of Law No. 3460 does not comply with several provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, as it places him in an unequal position compared to other non-working pensioners residing in contaminated zones who receive pension supplements not on the basis of a court decision, but through the “direct and unconditional” execution by the state, represented by its authorised bodies, of the obligation defined by Article 39 of Law No. 796. This, in his view, constitutes discrimination based on the exercise of the “right to appeal to a court”.

The applicant also argued that Article 8.2 of Law No. 3460 in fact reduced the pension supplement established by Article 39 of Law No. 796 by more than four times. Therefore, the contested provision of Law No. 3460 violates his right to property guaranteed by Article 41.1, 41.4 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

The Judge-Rapporteur noted that the Constitutional Court of Ukraine is currently deliberating a number of applications raising the same subject of constitutional review.

After examining the case materials, the Court proceeded to the in-camera part of the plenary session.

The public part of the plenary session is available on the Court's official website in the Section “Archive of video broadcasts of sessions”.