Government and social agents have reached this Monday an agreement in principle on the first leg of the pension reform by which the revaluation of pensions according to the CPI will be guaranteed , the effective retirement age will approach the legal age through a tightening of early retirement and greater incentives to delay retirement .
This is the first part of the pension reform committed with Brussels in component 30 of the Recovery Plan and with it, two of the most controversial aspects of the 2013 pension reform are suppressed: the pension revaluation index (IRP ) , which limited its annual rise to 0.25% in deficit situations, and the so-called sustainability factor. Aspects that generate greater disagreement between the parties remain for later.
The principle of agreement, developed in a normative text in the form of a preliminary bill, guarantees the maintenance of the purchasing power of contributory pensions, including minimum ones, by linking their annual revaluation with the average interannual variation of the CPI of the 12 months prior to December of the previous year. If this variation is negative, the amount of the pensions will not change at the beginning of the year.
As the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations, José Luis Escrivá , has advanced on several occasions , the preliminary draft establishes a series of measures to discourage early withdrawal from the labor market when it is voluntary.
Before knowing the principle of agreement, Escrivá stated during his speech at a breakfast organized by Nueva Economía Forum that “it is reasonable to think” that an agreement will be reached this week because “we have already had many meetings in which we have been approaching and improving the text progressively and with the contributions of all. I have the highest expectations with the last meetings that we are going to have this week “.
10 years have passed since the last agreement on this matter was closed, in 2011. Since then, pensions have been an area of continuous controversy in social dialogue. In 2013, the PP Government, then chaired by Mariano Rajoy, unilaterally changed the mechanism of increases and established it at 0.25% per year .
The approval of the management bodies of the CEOE is still missing
CCOO and UGT have highlighted in a joint statement that, by suppressing the 2013 reform, “the pension system is returned to guarantee the sufficiency of benefits for both current pensioners and future retirees”, collects Europa Press .
The agreement, to which the CEOE management bodies must still give the go-ahead, underlines the role of the State as public guarantor of the pension system, including in the General Social Security Law a clause through which a transfer will be made annually to Through the General State Budgets of about 2% of GDP (about 21,000 million euros).
“Thus the fulfillment, to date, of the principle of separation of sources is culminated and from now on about half of the increase in additional financing that our pension system is expected to need by 2050 is guaranteed,” the unions highlight .
Early and delayed retirement
By refocusing on early retirement, the unions claim that the reduction coefficients are generally reduced, the rules for voluntary and involuntary early retirement are given greater equity, and retirement rights are extended in various ways.
The reform also equalizes the rights linked to periods of compulsory female social service to those of military service already enjoyed, while reinforcing the incentive system to guarantee the voluntary adjustment of the effective and legal retirement age.
Likewise, a battery of measures is included by which new rights are recognized or some of those that already existed are extended, among which the equalization of the widow’s pension for common-law couples, the extension of the right to contributions for all training programs (scholarships) linked to university studies or professional training, whether or not they are remunerated, and the improvement of special agreements for family caregivers of dependent people, among others.
