End of the ultimatum and vote against. The general secretary of the Popular Party, Cuca Gamarra, has announced at a press conference in the Congress of Deputies that the main opposition party will vote against this Thursday a key economic reform, that of the pension system. Gamarra has assured that the Government has not provided his party with the “technical justification” required to assess how the sustainability of the system remains and that, therefore, it will vote negatively for the reform decree. “In the last few hours they have only given us three sheets Excel”, Gamarra stated when the PP assured that either it received sufficient information on Wednesday morning or it would say “no”.
The Government hopes to save the decree with its usual investiture partners, but the credibility of the reform is affected before Brussels and investors by not being endorsed by the main opposition party and candidate to govern in the next legislature.
Gamarra has justified the vote against by the lack of information and dialogue from the Government and the negative analysis of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) which concludes that the reform presented by the Minister of Inclusion, José Luis Escrivá, generates an additional deficit of 1.1% of the Gross Domestic Product (about 14,000 million today) without balancing the accounts. “Due to responsibility, we cannot support a reform that does not ensure the sustainability of the system and harms employment,” the PP spokesperson justified. She refers to the fact that AIReF has also warned that focusing the adjustment of pensions on raising the contributions of companies and workers can cause unemployment. “I don’t know what the former president of AIReF Escrivá would say to the current minister Escrivá,” Gamarra stressed.
For his part, the socialist spokesman Patxi López, has criticized the attitude of the PP. “To go to Brussels to say that he did not like the reform, he did not need more information,” he reproached in reference to the meetings between Alberto Núñez Feijóo with the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen and, above all, the European commissioner of Economic Affairs, Paolo Gentiloni. López insisted that the Government has “agreed” on the reform with Brussels, although the European Commission does not officially take it for granted.
For its part, Ciudadanos will also vote against it, also consistent with having voted in the same direction in the first reform presented by Escrivá. “It’s the robbery of the week, it’s non-reform,” said parliamentary spokesman Edmundo Bal. “Even though they try to cover it otherwise, the political failure of the reform is absolute and the credibility of the Ministry is totally in question. We already warned the Minister that approving the reform in two parts, first the easy one and then the difficult one, would end badly. And so it has been. If he has closed an “agreement” it is only because Mr. Escrivá, in practice, has renounced increasing the computation period. He has failed and intends to sell his inability as success, “says his economic spokesperson, María Muñoz to this journal.
“In the first pension reform, which we have already dismissed as irresponsible and unfair, Mr. Escrivá swore to us and swore that there was no problem, that the accounts balanced and that the Intergenerational Equity Mechanism (MEI) was sufficient to guarantee the sustainability of the system. The MEI has not been applied for three months and now we have to load it and replace it with others”. “We did not have confidence in the previous reform and they have proved us right. What is presented to us today does not give us confidence either. And time will prove us right sooner rather than later.”
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