Women only pension supplement breached EU equal treatment rules

Article here. Excerpt:

'On 12 December 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that Spanish social security rules that granted a pension supplement to women who have had two (biological or adopted) children and who receive a permanent incapacity pension and not to men in the same position breached the EU rules on equal treatment.

A Spanish man, WA, was granted a permanent incapacity pension in 2017. He brought an administrative complaint against this decision to the Spanish social security authority (INSS), on the basis that if he had been a woman he would have been entitled to an additional 5% supplementary payment. Woman in receipt of a permanent incapacity pension who had two (biological or adopted) children received this supplement; WA, who had two children, was not entitled to it. The INSS rejected his complaint, stating the supplement was granted to reflect women’s ‘demographic contribution’ to social security.

WA took his complaint to the Gerona Social Court (WA died in 2018 but his wife succeeded him as the complainant in the case). The Court asked the European Court of Justice for a preliminary reference on the question of whether a pension supplement payable only to women based on their ‘demographic contribution’ to social security infringes the principle of equal treatment in Article 157 of the EU Treaty and in the Directives on Equal Treatment in access to employment (76/207, amended by 2002/73 and recast by 2006/54).'