diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 2b20877..caca6d7 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
 Enhancements:
 
  - Do not force re-cartodbfication on CREATE FROM unpackaged
+ - Drop useless DEFAULT specification in plpgsql variable declarations
 
 0.2.0 - 2014-06-09
 ------------------
diff --git a/scripts-available/CDB_DateToNumber.sql b/scripts-available/CDB_DateToNumber.sql
index c879112..1b9a449 100644
--- a/scripts-available/CDB_DateToNumber.sql
+++ b/scripts-available/CDB_DateToNumber.sql
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 --
 CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION CDB_DateToNumber(input timestamp)
 RETURNS double precision AS $$
-DECLARE output double precision DEFAULT NULL;
+DECLARE output double precision;
 BEGIN
     BEGIN
         SELECT extract (EPOCH FROM input) INTO output;
diff --git a/scripts-available/CDB_StringToDate.sql b/scripts-available/CDB_StringToDate.sql
index cbdf4ec..fa2db05 100644
--- a/scripts-available/CDB_StringToDate.sql
+++ b/scripts-available/CDB_StringToDate.sql
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 --
 CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION CDB_StringToDate(input character varying)
 RETURNS date AS $$
-DECLARE output DATE DEFAULT NULL;
+DECLARE output DATE;
 BEGIN
     BEGIN
         output := input::date;