Brussels’ concern about the unsustainability of Spain’s pension reform is growing. This comes amidst spiralling inflation and at a time when it has to validate Minister Escrivá’s reform to authorise the transfer of 12 billion euros from the second tranche of the Recovery Plan. The government has yet to ask the European Commission for the payment of the second tranche of the Recovery Plan, the largest, almost 12 billion euros….

The newspaper El Economista explains today that on the same day as the Government approves the increase in pensions for this year, it will also have to come up with an extra almost 3.125 billion euros to finance the operation. This follows the deviation between the price estimate forecast by the Executive in the current General Budget and the strong rise in inflation in the last few months of 2021….

The OECD criticises the fact that Spain is abandoning the system of automatic adjustment of the pension system – which used the so-called “sustainability factor” – to replace it with the so-called “intergenerational equity mechanism”. The latter involves a rise in social security contributions of 0.6% over 10 years, something that is not even equivalent to the costs of indexing pensions to inflation. According to the OECD, the “intergenerational equity…

Fernando González Urbaneja | Escrivá manages to push through the first chapter of the reform book, which has two sides: guaranteeing purchasing power (more costs) and lengthening the retirement age, along the lines of the 2011 reform.To justify the budgetary subsidies to the system, which could distort and politicise it, the argument of “inappropriate expenditure” is used, which is a flexible box where everything that needs to be put in can fit.

The Social Security allocated 10.154 million euros to the payment of contributory pensions in May. This is a record figure which is 3% higher than a year earlier, the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration reported on Tuesday. More than two-thirds of the pension payroll went to retirement pensions, which totalled 7.303 million euros, 3.6% more than in May last year. Widows’ and widowers’ pensions were allocated 1.74 million…

Fernando González Urbaneja | Spain has a priority, essential employment problem: high chronic unemployment and job insecurity. Both of these are among the essential causes of a blushing inequality, among the worst in Europe. Then, to complicate the solutions, comes the problem of the high public deficit, which has increased over the last decade as an inevitable inevitability. A debt aggravated by its dependence on external financing with a bias towards instability. At the heart of this debt is the chronic deficit accumulated over the last decade in the pension system, which widens its deficit every year.