The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has tried to cover up this Friday in Brussels the criticism of the Independent Fiscal Authority (Airef) of the pension reform, harshly attacking the opposition leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and praising “social peace” in our country, unlike what happens in France or what happened in 2013. The day before, also from the community capital, Feijóo had insulted the reform, calling it a patch and ensuring that not only did it not guarantee the sustainability of the system, rather, it will be necessary to amend it in 2025 to do what has not been done now for electoral reasons.
“I have not been able to learn first-hand about the report [when meeting at the European Council], but it seems to me that it considers two scenarios, not just one, but with the utmost respect, we will read it carefully,” he said. Sánchez highlighted the “solidity and robustness of the numbers” and recalled that “institutions are not easy, those that we have had through discreet work are very intense debates. We want to guarantee the dignity of pensioners and the sustainability of the system in the short-medium and long. In addition to all this, we will incorporate for the first time in 10 years, it is said soon, 3,000 million euros into the pension piggy bank”.
But from there, the president has changed his tune. Feijóo’s visit, who met with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and with the Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Paolo Gentiloni, with whom he discussed the issue of pensions, has served to shift the focus, with very serious accusations and reproaches, trying to ensure that media attention is there, and not on the technical assessments, calculations and notices of Airef, which has a decisive role not only in monitoring the accounts, but in the reform of the pensions.
“Yesterday Feijóo was here and he met with Commissioner Gentiloni and Von der Leyen, in short, with whoever he could, to criticize the reform that the Government has proposed. The first assessment is that I thought that Mr. Casado’s disloyalty was not going to be never surpassed, but it has been in an evident and embarrassing way by Feijóo”. On Thursday, Minister José Luis Escrivá used the same idea, calling the popular leader “irresponsible, insolvent and unpatriotic” for bringing criticism of the reforms to Brussels.
The ‘popular’ compared the reform of Sánchez and Escrivá with that of Emmanuel Macron in France, pointing out that they go in completely the opposite direction and that, therefore, one of the two is wrong. The French reform implies delays in the retirement age (up to 64) and some cuts, and that served Escrivá to reproach the opposition for wanting to worsen the situation of citizens. And the comparison has been followed by Sánchez, but from another angle.
In France, the tension in the streets is so great that the British King has had to cancel the state visit scheduled for these days. Macron does not have the support of the National Assembly, the unions and other parties and has had to opt for a more than controversial constitutional decree. The Spanish Executive, however, points out that the opposite is true here. Feijóo ignored that the French starting situation was different from the Spanish one, and the president obvious that there are obviously no protests in the streets because this reform does not imply delays in age or cuts, but where it raises doubts is in sustainability and equity intergenerational, issues that are not remembered that have never taken anyone out on the street.
“The difference between our reform of 2023 and that of 2013 is that this proposal was unilateral, only with PP deputies, and this reform will be approved by many more parliamentary groups. That reform did not have the social agents, this reform in its first part to all and in the second it has the support of the trade union centrals and the endorsement of the community institutions”, said the president. The European Commission also endorsed the 2013 one and has actually used it for a decade as a perfect example of structural reform.
“If we remember 2013 and today, it is evident that today there is social peace, something fundamental for far-reaching reforms, and in 2013 there was no majority social response. Why should reforms always cause social pain for the right? There may be them in favor of the social majority”, has settled the president. “You have to read the Airef report carefully but we vindicate the intense work that we have had these months with the European Commission and the robustness of these data.”
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