The Minister of Social Security, José Luis Escrivá, presents this Thursday before the Congress of Deputies the final phase of his pension reform that aims to guarantee the sustainability of the system until 2050. Parliament’s support for its processing has already been assured by add more than 180 votes thanks to practically all the partners of the Government; However, the minister’s credibility is undermined after the criticism received not by the opposition, but by independent public bodies such as the Bank of Spain and Airef, which question the numbers that Escrivá puts on the table.
The PP also accuses the Government of hiding the data on the economic impact of the measures and conditions its vote – it is debated between no and abstention – to receive complete information. The minister defends himself, assures that he has already sent the popular and the rest of the parliamentary groups “all the information available” (“even the databases and spreadsheets” of the reform, he specified) and claims that he has starred in ” the greatest exercise in transparency that has ever been done”. »No ministry in history has disseminated such a level of detail«, he proclaimed this Wednesday in Congress.
And precisely the day before arriving in Congress, the Foundation for Applied Economics Studies (Fedea) charged again against a pension reform that “condemns” Social Security to a “significant and rapidly growing deficit that will have to be covered with income general, leaving little room for other priorities”, as a new report warns.
The document –prepared by Professor Ángel de la Fuente- maintains that “the reform will significantly increase the expected spending, but it will only modestly increase the system’s income, with which the basic Social Security deficit will increase very significantly in the coming decades , until approaching 5 points of GDP around 2050».
Fedea also criticized the “hasty” with which the details of the final part of a rule “with important implications for our public pension system and therefore for our public accounts” have been closed. “The text, which has aroused practically unanimous criticism from academic specialists and has generated doubts in Airef and the Bank of Spain, would have deserved a more detailed, informed and serene discussion than it has had”, denounces the author, who He advocates processing the text as a bill and taking the opportunity to give it another thought and seek a broader consensus.