The 30.4% cut, endorsed in a revote after it fell through in April, will affect more than 9,000 pensioners, applying already to June pensions.

It is needed because in 2016 the state reduced its annual sum to the fund from EUR 6 million to EUR 600,000 a year, so the fund is short of money, director general Bojan Jean has recently told the STA.

However, the vote does not necessarily mean the pensions will actually be cut as talks with the Labour Ministry are continuing, he said after today's assembly.

The fund was set up in 1956 as a parallel pension insurance fund because craftsmen and sole proprietors were not included in pension and healthcare insurance schemes like other employees.

The first payments to the fund were made in 1965 and the first pensions were paid out after 1985.

The fund stopped selling occupational pension plans in 1996, after which craftsmen and sole proprietors started investing in the ZPIZ national pension insurance fund.

To make up for the wrong, the National Assembly passed in 2000 a special bill allocating to the fund an annual compensation, but then lowered it in 2016.

The Chamber of Craft and Small Business (OZS) has already protested against the planned cut, saying it would stage rallies if it was endorsed.

At a recent press conference, OZS president Branko Meh said the average pension paid by the fund was around EUR 84, so it would be "absurd to lower the amount by 30%".

As a possible solution, the OZS proposes the persons insured by the fund and the assets they have saved be transferred onto the ZPIZ.