The Government has given the green light this Thursday to the new reform of the pensions and the project of civil service law. This has been approved in the Minister council extraordinary summoned to speed up the definitive validation in Congress of two measures committed to Brussels and compliance with which conditions the receipt of the fourth disbursement of European funds, of some 10,000 million euros. “With this reform we shield the purchasing power of all pensioners, present and future”, declared the Minister of Inclusion and Social Security, Jose Luis Escrivaat the press conference after the ministerial conclave.
The coalition Executive culminates this Thursday one of the most far-reaching structural reforms of the legislature: that of the public pension system. A reform designed 40 years from now and that had its first milestone in the gardens of the Moncloa palace, in June 2021, when Pedro Sanchez signed with the CEOE, CCOO and UGT the first block of changes, which, among others, linked contributory benefits to the CPI so that each year they would rise as inflation rose. Something that has had a special impact in 2023, when, given the price spiral, pensions have risen by 8.5%, a historic and unprecedented increase.
The employers, although it was in that first block of the reform that implemented changes that would dissipate public spending, has not endorsed the subsequent ones, through which the Government hopes to tax more companies and workers to bring more resources to the public treasury. The rule implies an increase in social contributions, a non-proportional and lesser increase in maximum pensions and a reinforcement of minimum pensions. A pensioner with a dependent spouse, one of the most common profiles, will have a minimum contributory pension of 16,500 euros per year in 2027, 22% more than now.
“Faced with reforms that emphasized cuts, this is a reform that strengthens the Welfare state by reinforcing revenue”, Escrivá declared. Now the royal decree approved by the Government must achieve sufficient parliamentary support, something that seems on track after the interventions of parties such as CKD, EH Bildu and GNP in the commission of Pact of Toledo this past Wednesday. Congress will vote within a month to validate or not this royal decree.
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The other norm validated this Thursday in the Council of Ministers and that now passes to Congress for processing as a bill is that of public function. The main novelties of the standard designed by the minister Maria Jesus Montero They are the streamlining of the times for the publication and resolution of public employment offers, which are shortened from three to two years. Two new salary supplements are also created, the “career supplement” and the “performance” (which replaces the productivity one. In relation to the latter, a periodic system of evaluations is established to reward those public employees who show better performance, also with regard to their transfers.
The norm leads the way to Congress after the endorsement of a union majority. CCOO and UGT voted affirmatively for the new civil service law, in the face of the rejection of csif. The endorsement of two of the three majority centrals came once Montero agreed to resign from the position of those officials who repeatedly fail their evaluation of merits.