2023-06-22 17:40:37
Yolanda Díaz during her participation in the courses of the Menéndez Pelayo International University, this Thursday in Santander. Pedro Puente Hoyos (EFE)
The second vice president of the Government and candidate for the presidency for Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, has considered insufficient the proposal of the president of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, to maintain the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI) at 60% of the average salary. “I think that Sánchez has fallen short. The European Social Charter talk about at least 60% of the average salary [es decir, puede superar esa cifra]. Spain is 25 points away from the salary averages of the rest of Europe”, Díaz said this Thursday in Santander.
The candidate for Sumar has defended that the SMI must continue to grow. “If we govern again, the minimum wage will be raised again in a deliberate strategy to raise wages in a general way due to the tractor effect it has”, he assured in his speech at the forum organized by the Association of Economic Information Journalists ( APIE) and the Menéndez Pelayo International University, sponsored by BBVA.
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The Vice President and Minister of Labor has taken credit for the increases in the SMI during the last legislature, one of the banners of the coalition government. Since the motion of no confidence and Sánchez’s arrival at La Moncloa, the minimum wage has risen by almost 50%. Díaz has reported that her department agreed to the first increase of this legislature with unions and employers. And the following revaluations were signed bipartitely, only with the unions.
Among the main economic reforms that he has defended in the forum are the defense of wages from inflation and the control of business margins. Díaz has affirmed that the Bank of Spain and the ECB point out that the upward spiral in prices is due to the increase in profits. Luis de Guindos, vice president of Eurobank, later participated in the forum, in Santander, and explained that looking only at the year 2022, it is true that business margins contributed more than the salary increase. However, if a longer period is taken, this is not the case: “If we take from 2020, according to our calculations, the contribution to inflation has been almost identical.”
Guindos, in addition, to questions from journalists about the upcoming general elections and the possibility that he could be vice president of a PP government, has said that he hopes to continue in Frankfurt: “I have a little less than three years left in the ECB and I hope to fulfill my command.” That is, he is not running as a candidate, although he has not ruled out that possibility outright either.
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Help for mortgaged
The Minister of Labor has also assured that one of the major problems and the cause of social unrest is the loss of purchasing power. As Díaz explained, the blow to the pocket of families comes from inflation and the abrupt increase in interest rates. This boosts the Euribor, which makes mortgage payments on variable-rate loans more expensive.
To alleviate this blow, the leader of Sumar has proposed the creation of an emergency bond so that families can pay for the rise in mortgages. In Spain there are some five million loans for home purchase, of which 3.7 million have contracted a variable rate (it is usually updated once a year referenced to the Euribor). The aid will consist of a direct transfer of 1,000 euros to households that meet certain income requirements. The bond will have a fiscal cost of 1,000 million and will be paid for with taxes paid by the banks.
On this issue, he has also criticized the operation of the extension of the Code of Good Practices, agreed at the end of last year between the Ministry of Economy, led by Vice President Nadia Calviño, and the financial sector. “The code is not working. It was expected to affect one million families and the Bank of Spain reduced the impact to 200,000 mortgaged. And the real impact is that it has affected only 10,000,” Díaz lamented. The latest known figure is that in the first two months with the protocol in force, 9,000 applications were received.
The vice president has stressed that the agreement reached does not work. “It’s not an opinion, it’s the data,” she said. Therefore, she has been in favor of opening a new negotiation with the bank to change the requirements. “They are the first interested in people being able to pay their mortgages,” she has settled.
Asked about the format of the electoral debates during the campaign, Díaz stressed that citizens “are much more concerned about the time in their lives than about the time of the debates” and has reiterated the proposal formulated by the coalition, which includes different models (two, four and seven candidates) and also sectoral debates on specific topics, such as culture, labor relations, technology or feminism.
“The times of the old electoral campaigns, based on rallies, on extremely expensive and anti-ecological campaigns, have passed,” stressed the vice president before committing “to be in each and every one of the debates” that are held. “The Spain of two men debating has passed. They leave half the population out. It is a mistake ”, she added about a two-way format between President Pedro Sánchez and the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Díaz has also emphasized, as in previous days, that Sumar’s campaign will be focused “on ideas.”
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