Supreme Court Allows Unemployed Man to Keep €12,000 in Benefits Received by Mistake

To err is human, but it has its consequences. This is the decision of the Supreme Court regarding a benefit mistakenly received by a retiree during his period of unemployment over the age of 55, an error not of his making, but of the administration, of which he was unaware.

Thus, the Social Chamber of the High Court recently ruled that this worker does not have to return the €12,000 paid to him by the State Public Employment Service (SEPE) as unemployment benefits for those over 55, as the public body had requested.

The ruling, accessed by this newspaper, confirms and upholds a 2022 judgment by the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) that sided with the worker against the SEPE's stance. The claimant was granted unemployment benefits for those over 55 in April 2015 until reaching retirement age after the National Institute of Social Security verified he met the necessary requirements, namely, the sufficient contribution period. He received this benefit for several years, from 2015 to 2018, accumulating a total amount of €12,030.48.

However, in February 2018, Social Security issued a new certificate indicating that at the time of the application, the worker did not meet the specific contribution period required for entitlement to the contributory retirement pension, and that this certificate annulled and replaced the one issued on April 9, 2015. Subsequently, the SEPE demanded he return the entire amount received in error, and a Madrid court supported the agency, but the affected party appealed to the TSJM, and now the Supreme Court has ruled in his favor, establishing a precedent based on the 'Cakarevic doctrine', which originates from a European Court of Human Rights ruling and states that if the error is on the part of the Administration and there was no bad faith on the part of the beneficiary, the money received in error should not be returned.