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pension regulations
Can anyone translate the following into common language?
"For the pensions of salaried persons, the legislation provides a minimal pension entitlement per career year, as long as the retired person has a career of at least 15 years in 1/3 time employment and every year of employment equals at least a third of a full-time position."
Look at each calendar year of your working career separately.
Each year in which your employment equated to around ⅓ of a full time job (i.e. you worked approximately 700 hours or more = full-time for 4 months or more, or at least 2 days a week for a whole year) counts as a qualifying year, if you worked less than this it doesn't count as a qualifying year.
If you have worked at least 15 qualifying years then you are entitled to a minimum pension based on the total number of qualifying years you have worked, but if you have worked less than 15 qualifying years then you are not entitled to a salaried person's pension.
As I read the English version of the regulations as restated by you, that is correct. To be absolutely certain one would have to read the French, Dutch or German versions as only those will be definitive statements of the situation in Belgian law.
Although the 14 full-time/15 part-time situation that you quote doesn't sound quite fair, remember that the actual pension will take into account the lower part-time earnings, and it isn't at all unusual for state-regulated pensions to be dependent on having worked a minimum number of years before ANY payment is made.
