Zanin requests review and suspends judgment on FGTS in the Supreme Court

Minister Cristiano Zanin, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), requested a review and suspended this Thursday (9) the judgment on the correction index for the accounts of the Service Time Guarantee Fund (FGTS).

During the session, Zanin explained that he received new data on the financial impacts of the eventual change in the correction and will need more time to analyze the issue. There is no date for the resumption of the trial.

So far, the score of the trial is 3 votes to 0 to consider the use of the Reference Rate (TR) to remunerate workers’ accounts unconstitutional. By understanding, the correction cannot be lower than the savings remuneration.

The rapporteur, Luís Roberto Barroso, and ministers André Mendonça and Nunes Marques voted in this sense.

Wishes

In today’s session, Barroso expanded the vote given in previous sessions to establish that, from 2025, new deposits in the fund’s accounts may be remunerated annually based on savings. Furthermore, the Court would make the distribution of the fund’s profits mandatory in the years 2023 and 2024. Currently, the distribution carried out by the management committee is optional.

According to the rapporteur’s understanding, it would not be possible to apply the new form of correction in 2024 so as not to compromise the measures of the fiscal framework and because it is not foreseen in the current budget project that is in Congress.

Understand

The case began to be judged by the Supreme Court following an action filed in 2014 by the Solidariedade party. The party maintains that the TR correction, with a return close to zero per year, does not adequately remunerate account holders, losing out to real inflation.

Created in 1966 to replace the guarantee of job stability, the Service Time Guarantee Fund functions as compulsory savings and financial protection against unemployment. In the case of dismissal without just cause, the employee receives the FGTS balance, plus a fine of 40% of the amount.

After the action was filed with the STF, laws began to come into force, and the accounts began to be corrected with interest of 3% per year, the increase in the distribution of profits from the fund, in addition to the correction by the TR.

For the federal government, the Attorney General’s Office (AGU) defended the extinction of the action. In the body’s understanding, laws 13,446/2017 and 13,932/2019 established the distribution of profits to shareholders. Therefore, according to the agency, it is no longer possible to state that the use of TR generates lower remuneration than real inflation.