Friday witnessed the first pension reductions mandated by the third memorandum, which was negotiated and sent for ratification to Parliament this month by the outgoing SYRIZA government.

Specifically, an increase in the withholding tax in favor of the state health system (EOPYY) kicked in on Friday, with the first “victims” being pensioners belonging to IKA, the largest fund for retirees from the private sector. Reductions in pensions paid to former civil servants were also “achieved” on Friday, with pensioners of other funds to see reductions in the coming days.

The measure is expected to collect an additoinal 700 million euros in money for the health care system, with hikes of 6 percent and 4 percent slapped on primary pensions — a high and low rate — and between 6 percent and no increase on supplementary pensions.

The measure is also retroactive, to include July and August 2015, with the withheld sum taken in three installments.

The extra proceeds — but lower pensions — will presumably be funneled back into the health care system and not be added to the general budget, although a similar measure instituted by the previous government — a five-euro admission fee for separate out-patient hospital visits — was first ridiculed then scrapped by the leftist government as “afflicting the lower classes”.

For a person only receiving a 600-euro primary pension, the loss equals 12 euros per month; for someone receiving 600 euros in a monthly pension, plus 200 euros as a supplementary pension, the loss is …24 euros.

In a bid to deflect what promises to be heightened anger over the austerity-tinged measure, the outgoing radical leftist government said the pension cuts “avoided the immediate” reduction in a bonus (EKAS) paid out each month to low-pension earners. SYRIZA pointed to the “EKAS reduction” as being included in the so-called “Hardouvelis e-mail”, named for the previous government’s finance minister and employed by the then SYRIZA opposition to attack the policies of the pro-memorandum ND-PASOK coalition government.

Of course, the tax hikes and spending cuts foreseen by the “Hardouvelis email” were alternately calculated at 700 million to one billion euros, whereas the leftist SYRIZA memorandum tops off at more than 60 billion euros…

The “immediate” referred to the fact that the SYRIZA memorandum envisions the elimination of the EKAS bonus in three years times and not immediately.