Report 2011 - EFTA Court

18 in its reply of 11 March 2010, the Norwegian Government
stated that the amendments to the Public Service Pension
Act were being followed up by the Norwegian Public Service
Pension Fund and the Mutual insurance Company (Kommunal
Landspensjonskasse). it was expected that repayments of past
pensions would be carried out by the end of September 2010.
Payment of interest would be decided on in each individual case.
19 By a letter of 3 May 2010, the Norwegian Government informed
ESA that the treatment of cases concerning past pensions was,
for several reasons, complex and required mainly individual
processing. For example, the relevant persons had to be identified
in the registers of the pension funds, and the calculation split
between pensionable periods before and after 1994. Furthermore,
the Government indicated that repayments would be adjusted to
reflect changes in the cost of living.
20 in its letter of 8 November 2010, the Norwegian Government
stated that the Public Service Pension Fund, responsible for the
implementation of this matter, would need more time to finalise
the work. The Government stated as the reason for the delay
that each case was considerably more resource-intensive than
expected. Furthermore, it had transpired that the number of
cases was double initial expectations. Whereas the first estimate
was for 1 200 to 1 600 cases, the Pension Fund now estimated
the number of cases to be approximately 3 000. So far, about
600 cases had been dealt with. Around half of the cases were
expected to be finalised before January 2011, the rest in June
2011.
21 On 11 November 2010, the case was discussed at a meeting
between ESA and the Norwegian Government. At the meeting,
the Norwegian Government admitted that the Pension Fund had
not been allocated additional funds following the adoption of the
Act with a view to hiring extra personnel to deal with this matter.
ESA noted that three years had passed since the EFTA Court had
delivered its judgment in Case E-2/07. Consequently, in its view,
the progress in the execution of the judgment had been too slow.
The Norwegian Government was invited to provide ESA by 12
Case E-18/10 EFTA Surveillance Authority xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
v The Kingdom of Norway
Summary Judgment
CAse Case
e-18/10
e-xx/x
e-8/11
209