JOHN MÜLLER
@cultrun
MADRID
Sunday, December 29, 2019 - 11:07
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It is incomprehensible that the Executive has not fulfilled its promise to revalue pensions or raise the salaries of officials because a new government has not yet been established. It would be good if the president, Pedro Sánchez, or his spokesperson, Isabel Celaá, clarify how it is possible for the acting government to approve - last November 22 - the millionaire update of the remuneration for renewable energy, but instead cannot readjust pensions.
In the same council of ministers on Friday 27, there was a very contradictory case: the acting government is not considered qualified to attend to pensioners, but to update the cadastre, renew the Patrimony Tax or the unit rate by which calculates the benefit that nuclear power plants pay to the National Radioactive Waste Company (Enresa) for the management of their waste. As Celaá herself explained, ufana, to journalists, that last rate had not been revised since 2010! A acting government of Sanchez has had to come to do it!
The issue of pensions has crumbs, because non-revaluation is a freeze . If the government had not done anything, the pensions would have had to be updated by 0.25%, which is the amount collected in the current law when the Social Security system has a deficit, as is the case.
To avoid this automatic update, the government has had to suspend sine die and by royal decree-law (RDL) the application of article 58 of the General Law of Social Security, which stipulates such readjustment. There are experts who drafted that rule during the Rajoy government that stress that the suspension of a Law by royal decree-law neither respects the requirement of urgent need demanded from the RDL nor is it limited to the dispatch of ordinary matters that are required from the acting government .
The government is shielded in a computer and postal subterfuge to freeze. «If this article were not suspended, there would be two revaluations (from 0.25% first and up to 0.9% later), which would double the computer applications and multiply by two the cost in communication to the beneficiaries of the pensions, ”says the review of the council of ministers.
The interpretation that has been made of these actions of the Government has been political. Sanchez is considered to try to pressure the parties that could facilitate their investiture to do so. The fact that these decisions have no impact on the 2019 deficit would support this hypothesis.
In its latest reports, the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) considers it "unlikely" that the government meets the deficit target reported to Brussels in March, April and September (2% of GDP) and, with data known until November , estimates that a deviation of 0.2% (more than 2,000 million) will occur. We must not forget that the original deficit target for 2019 was -1.3%.
All measures that involve expenses have been postponed to 2020 (the remuneration for renewables is for the period 2020-2025) due to the need to establish a government, while for income (cadastre, equity ...) it seems that such a democratic requirement is not necessary and a functioning Executive is sufficient. The most striking thing is that on the remuneration of renewables, none of the opposition parties that could have appealed the constitutionality of the measure, has done so.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more- Isabel Celaá
- Mariano Rajoy
- GDP
- Pedro Sanchez
- Social Security
- Pensions
- Public deficit
- economy
- Taxes
Macroeconomics Social Security shoots its equity hole 142% and reaches a record 33,260 million
Social Security Sanchez breaches its electoral promise and freezes pensions until the Government is formed
Social Security The OECD adds to the pressure on Sánchez: linking pensions to the CPI threatens sustainability