03/09/2025
On 3 September 2025, during the public part of the plenary session, the First Senate deliberated the case of Tetiana Volkova in the form of written proceedings.
During the plenary session, the judge-rapporteur in the case, Oleksandr Petryshyn, informed on the content of the constitutional complaint, the subject of constitutional review, and the circumstances of the case.
He noted that the complainant had appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to verify the compliance of parts one and two of Article 45 of the Law of Ukraine “On the State Budget of Ukraine for 2025” dated 19 November 2024 No. 4059-IX (hereinafter, “Law No. 4059”) with the Constitution of Ukraine.
The contested provisions of Law No. 4059 stipulate that “in 2025, for the period of martial law in Ukraine, additional payments to unemployed pensioners who permanently reside in the zone of unconditional (mandatory) relocation and in the zone of guaranteed voluntary relocation provided that such persons resided or worked in the zone of unconditional (mandatory) relocation or in the zone of guaranteed voluntary relocation as of 26 April 1986 or during the period from 26 April 1986 to 1 January 1993, in connection with which the person was granted the status of a person affected by the Chornobyl disaster. The additional payment for living in the specified territories is set at 2,361 UAH.
Persons who, after the accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (26 April 1986), independently or in accordance with the procedure established by law, on the instructions of regional state administrations, changed their place of residence outside the zones of unconditional (mandatory) resettlement or guaranteed voluntary resettlement and subsequently returned to their permanent place of residence in these zones, as well as persons who registered their place of residence or moved to a permanent place of residence in the specified zones after the accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, no additional payment for living in such zones shall be established.
Based on the results of the analysis of the constitutional complaint and the materials attached to it, it appears that Tetiana Volkova is a person who suffered as a result of the Chornobyl disaster and lives in a settlement that is classified as a zone of guaranteed voluntary resettlement.
From 1 January 2025, the Central Administration of the Pension Fund of Ukraine in the Zhytomyr region (hereinafter, “Administration”), taking into account the requirements of parts one and two of Article 45 of Law No. 4059, recalculated Tetiana Volkova's pension without paying her an increase.
Disagreeing with this, she appealed to the Zhytomyr District Administrative Court with a statement in which she requested, in particular, that the actions of the Administration regarding the termination of the accrual and payment of the increase to her pension from 1 January 2025 be recognised as unlawful.
The courts of first and appeal instances left the statement unsatisfied.
In the applicant's opinion, the contested provisions of the Law “unlawfully deprive the least protected social group in Ukraine < ... > of their right to property – legitimate expectations of the State's fulfilment of guarantees in the form of pension increases for non-working pensioners”.
After examining the case materials, the Court proceeded to the in-camera part of the plenary session.
The video recording of the plenary session is available on the Court's official website under the heading “Archive of video broadcasts of sessions”.
