General requirements stipulated
The general requirements to gain entitlement to benefits under the Special Schemes, in each case, are the following:
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To be affiliated or in a situation equivalent to affiliation in the corresponding System. However, a worker may be entitled to a pension from a non-active status, if he or she meets the established requirements.
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Fulfilling the minimum contributory period required, where applicable.
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To be up-to-date with payments for which workers are directly liable, even though the benefit is awarded due to the reciprocal sum of contributions in a salaried employee system.
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For these purposes, the payment demand mechanism provided for in |art. 28.2 of Decree 2530/1970, passed on 20 August, will be applicable for whatever Social Security system to which the applicant may belong at the time of applying for the benefit or in the system said benefit is applied for.
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When, by deferring settlement of the payments owed, the applicant is considered up-to-date with payments for the purposes of awarding a benefit and he subsequently fails to meet the deferred payment schedule or conditions, he will no longer be considered up-to-date with payments, and the benefit he was receiving will immediately be suspended, and it will only be resumed once the debt with the Social Security has been settled in full. To this end, the benefit Management Entity may deduct the corresponding deferred debt payment from the monthly amounts accrued by the claimant.
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For the purposes of acknowledging a pension entitlement, the contributions corresponding to the month of the causal event of the pension and to the two months prior to that, payment of which does not yet appear on the Social Security information systems, will be considered paid and the worker will not have to provide documentary evidence of this, provided he accredits the minimum contribution period required, without counting these three months therein.
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In these cases, every year, the managing entity will review all the pensions acknowledged in the previous year that were presumed up-to-date with payments to verify the timely and effective payment of these contributions. In the event that said contributions were not paid, the pension will be immediately suspended and the monthly pension payments will be retained to settle the contribution payments until they are fully paid off, whereupon pension payment will commence once again.
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