Disability Pension (Versehrtenrente, Austria)

Requirements and commencement

An entitlement to a Versehrtenrente exists if the insured person’s earning capacity is reduced by at least 20 percent for more than three months after the insured event as a result of an occupational accident or occupational disease (§ 203 para. 1 ASVG). For pupils, students and kindergarten children, and for insured events under the general clause, a threshold of 50 percent applies. The reduction in earning capacity (MdE) is determined abstractly by medical expert opinion according to the earning opportunities remaining on the general labour market. The pension accrues from the day after the insured event; where there is an entitlement to sickness benefit it begins on the day after that benefit ceases, but at the latest in the 27th week after the insured event (§ 204 ASVG). For employees the carrier is the AUVA.

Amount and assessment

For total incapacity to earn the full pension amounts annually to 66 2/3 percent of the assessment basis; for partial incapacity the partial pension is the share of the full pension corresponding to the MdE (§ 205 para. 2 ASVG); for as long as the person is involuntarily unemployed as a result of the insured event, the partial pension may be increased up to the full pension (§ 205 ASVG). The assessment basis is in principle the sum of the contribution bases in the last year before the insured event, capped by the maximum contribution basis (§§ 178 f. ASVG). Severely injured persons with an MdE of at least 50 percent receive an additional pension of 20 percent, and from 70 percent of 50 percent of the Versehrtenrente (§ 205a ASVG), as well as child supplements (§ 207 ASVG). The pension is paid fourteen times a year, granted in full alongside any earned income, adjusted annually and exempt from income tax. Within the first two years it may be set as a provisional pension; where it is foreseeable that the entitlement will only exist for a limited time, a total settlement may be paid as a lump sum (§ 209 ASVG). A significant change in the MdE leads to a reassessment (§ 210 ASVG).

Country comparison

The German Verletztenrente under § 56 SGB VII is almost identical to the Versehrtenrente: 20 percent threshold, abstract MdE assessment and a full pension of two thirds of the annual earnings, though with a waiting period of 26 rather than 13 weeks. The Swiss UVG disability pension already starts at 10 percent disability, amounts to 80 percent of insured earnings and rests on a concrete comparison of incomes. For private accident insurance in Austria the Versehrtenrente is the reference point against which the need for disability lump sums and accident annuities is measured.