“A group of People’s Deputies has submitted a draft law for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, which aims to ensure fair enrollment in the work experience of the period of actual care for a child who, according to a medical opinion, needs constant home care – until such a child reaches the age of six. The size of the pension in Ukraine directly depends on the length of the insurance period. Loss of three years of experience can”, — write on: ua.news
A group of People’s Deputies has submitted a draft law for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, which aims to ensure fair enrollment in the work experience of the period of actual care for a child who, according to a medical opinion, needs constant home care – until such a child reaches the age of six.
The size of the pension in Ukraine directly depends on the length of the insurance period. Losing three years of service can significantly affect the size of the future pension, especially for people with low earnings or an interrupted working career. For a person whose experience is on the border of the minimum required for the appointment of an old-age pension, these three years can become decisive. Thus, the draft law is undoubtedly a positive initiative aimed at protecting persons who cannot exercise their labor rights due to the need to care for a sick child.
However, the proposed toolkit is insufficient to achieve this goal.
The key change proposed by the draft law concerns point “g” of part three of Article 56 of the Law of Ukraine “On Pension Security”.
The specified norm in the current edition counts the time of a non-working mother caring for minor children as work experience, but not longer than before each child reaches the age of 3.
The amended norm proposed by a group of people’s deputies supplements this text with an important extension – and in the case that a child needs home care based on a medical opinion, no longer than until such a child reaches 6 years of age.
The authors of the draft law justify its necessity in the Explanatory Note:
– Reconciliation of the norms of pension legislation with labor legislation and the Law “On Vacations”;
– Prevention of discrimination against persons who provide necessary care for children with long-term medical conditions;
– Increasing the level of social protection for families with children who need additional care.
Despite the stated goal, the proposed text preserves the narrow and gender-specific wording of “non-working mother” inherited from the current version of the law.
Article 179 of the Labor Code of Ukraine is gender-neutral and grants the right to parental leave not only to the mother, but also to the father, grandmother, grandfather or other relatives who actually provide care.
By keeping the wording of “non-working mother”, the draft law does not eliminate the conflict, but only deepens it. It harmonizes the duration of the period of care, but leaves the circle of subjects who can claim the corresponding right uncoordinated.
This leads to legal gender inequality: a father can legally take leave to care for a sick child between the ages of three and six, but this period will not count towards his pensionable years. At the same time, such experience will be counted for a mother in an identical situation. Such a norm directly contradicts Article 24 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which guarantees equal rights of women and men, and the principles of the Law of Ukraine “On Ensuring Equal Rights and Opportunities of Women and Men” (absence of restrictions or privileges based on gender).
Instead of promoting equality policies and the involvement of men in childcare, the bill as it currently stands enshrines a discriminatory standard in pension legislation and reinforces the outdated social stereotype that long-term childcare is an exclusively female role.
The statement of the Explanatory Note that the implementation of the draft law does not require additional expenditures from the State Budget of Ukraine is controversial.
The authors probably proceed from the fact that the financial and economic justification concerns only the direct costs of the current budget. However, this law creates future (deferred) obligations of the state to pay a higher pension after many years.
A group of people’s deputies ignores the main principle of the modern pension system of Ukraine, which is insurance. The right to pension provision and the inclusion of periods in the insurance period are inextricably linked with the payment of insurance contributions (EUV).
The draft law proposes to include the period of care in the length of service, but does not in any way regulate the issue of payment of social security for this period. This gap makes the norm legally ineffective and creates an illusory social guarantee that the Pension Fund of Ukraine (PFU) will not be able to fulfill within the limits of the current legislation.
According to the Law of Ukraine “On Mandatory State Pension Insurance”, the insurance period is the period during which a person was subject to insurance and for which monthly insurance premiums were paid in an amount not less than the minimum insurance premium.
In paragraph 30 of the resolution dated July 22, 2025 in case No. 120/6021/24, the Supreme Court emphasized that since January 1, 2004, a mandatory condition for the inclusion of a certain period in the insurance record is the period of time during which a person is subject to mandatory state pension insurance and for which monthly insurance contributions are paid in an amount no less than than the minimum insurance premium.
This principle is followed in the decision of the Supreme Court dated April 30, 2021 in case No. 816/1234/17. The Court of Cassation clearly distinguished between the concepts of receiving state child care assistance and being on official care leave, which is related to labor relations. The court found that the social insurance, which is paid by the social security authorities for persons receiving assistance, is directed exclusively to the mandatory state pension insurance and is not distributed to other types of social insurance. This emphasizes that not only the fact of payment of the contribution, but also its intended purpose is critically important for crediting seniority.
Therefore, the draft law creates a legislative conflict:
– The PFU will be obliged to refuse to include this period in the seniority, since there is no mechanism for payment of ESSV, which is confirmed by the data of personalized accounting.
– Citizens, relying on the new law, will be misled into thinking that their pension rights are protected, but after decades they will be denied.
– This will inevitably lead to mass lawsuits, which will create an additional burden on the judicial system and legal uncertainty.
It is important to note that the legislator has already created an effective mechanism for similar cases. For example, Law No. 8294 introduced changes that included non-working parents caring for children with serious illnesses among the insured persons, and provided for the payment of social insurance for them.
The lack of a similar approach in draft law No. 14119 is a mistake that makes the proposed norm ineffective in practice.
The only basis for obtaining the right to enroll in additional tr their years of experience in accordance with draft law No. 14119 is a “medical opinion”. The procedure for obtaining it involves the issuance of a certificate in the form No. 080-1/o, which is issued based on the decision of the Medical Advisory Commission (MAC). It is this document that becomes the key element that opens access to the corresponding social benefit.
The system of issuing medical certificates in Ukraine, in particular through the LKK, is an area with systemic and well-documented corruption risks. These risks include bribery for establishing fictitious diagnoses, collusion by doctors, forging documents to receive social benefits or evasion of mobilization.
The draft law, giving a significant financial value (three years of pensionable service) to one certificate, inevitably creates a new market for corrupt services. There is a demand for obtaining such a document illegally, which will be satisfied by the existing corruption infrastructure. As a result, the benefit may go not to those families who need it most because of the child’s health, but to those who have the financial ability or connections to “buy” the necessary conclusion. Without providing any safeguards, verification mechanisms or clear objective criteria for issuing the relevant certificate, the law actually creates new corruption risks.
Thus, despite its undeniable social importance, draft law No. 14119 in its current version is legally defective. In order to transform this initiative from a declaration of intent into an effective social protection tool, three key steps must be taken: introduce gender-neutral terminology, create a mechanism for payment of the EUV by analogy with existing laws, and develop safeguards against corruption risks in the issuance of medical opinions. Only under such conditions will the law be able to ensure real social justice.
Ruslan Hutsol