7.

To that end, it may be useful to give a brief account of the characteristics of the Community pension scheme, bearing in mind above all that, under the terms of the first paragraph of Article II of the Staff Regulations, an official who has completed at least ten years' service is entitled to a retirement pension. He is, however, entitled to such a pension, irrespective of length of service, if he is over 60, or if it has not been possible to reinstate him during a period of non-active status or else in the event of retirement in the interests of the service. Moreover, under Article 83(1) and (2) of the Staff Regulations, benefits paid under the pension scheme are charged to the budget of the Communities, and the Member States jointly guarantee payment of such benefits, whilst officials for their part contribute onethird of the cost of financing the scheme by means of a contribution of 6.75% of the basic salary. Similarly, Article 36 of Annex VIII to the Staff Regulations lays down that salaries are in all cases to be subject to deduction of the contribution to the pension scheme provided for in Articles 77 to 84 of the Staff Regulations, whilst Article 37 thereof states that an official on secondment is to continue to pay the contribution referred to in the preceding article, and the same applies to an official receiving the allowance provided for in respect of non-active status or retirement in the interests of the service, and to officials on leave on personal grounds who are continuing to acquire further pension rights. It is common ground, moreover, that a serving official who has already acquired entitlement to the maximum amount of the retirement pension nevertheless continues to be obliged to pay pension contributions. It follows from all those considerations that, unlike in a private insurance scheme where everyone is free to determine the amount and frequency of contributions, under the scheme established by the Staff Regulations pension contributions are mandatory in nature, since such a scheme is based on the notion of collective solidarity, and is a distributive scheme rather than a capitalized scheme. As Advocate General Capotorti rightly pointed out in the Grogan case: ( 4 )‘the fact remains that, according to the Staff Regulations of Officials, the amount of the pension is not determined on the basis of the amount of the contributions paid but by reference to the “total number of years of pensionable service acquired” (first paragraph of Article 2 of Annex VIII to the Staff Regulations) and to the salary payable on termination of service (first subparagraph of Article 82(1) of the Staff Regulations). Any variation, during the term of the employment relationship, in the amount of the social security contributions paid has no bearing on the final amount of the pension. Therefore, it is quite conceivable that, whilst there is a difference between the total number of contributions paid by them, two officials may, on retiring, become entitled to a pension of the same amount. That may occur in the case of officials who have acquired the same number of years of pensionable service and who are, on termination of service, in receipt of the same salary, irrespective of the stage reached in their career. That type of system, moreover, is in conformity with that in force in some of the Member States (for example, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands), which provides for the monthly deduction from the salaries of public servants of specific amounts by way of social security contributions but does not correlate the amount of the pension to the amounts deducted’.