Spain will pay dearly if the Government is not capable of adopting a pension reform that meets the sustainability criteria of the European Commission or if the reform in question strays from the commitments made when requesting the money from the funds. Next Generation EU. There are, theoretically, billions of euros at stake.
This is deduced from the document published yesterday by the community executive, which details the methodology that will be applied in the event that a country requests a partial disbursement because it has not been able to complete one of the agreed reforms before requesting a new aid payment or in in the event that its implementation does not fit with the objectives that had been set in the national recovery and resilience plans.
The reform of the pension system is one of the most important measures included in the Recovery Plan for Spain approved by Brussels, which includes the measures that must be adopted (415 reforms and milestones) to access the funds allocated to face the economic consequences of the pandemic. Spain, the country that is most advanced in its implementation, has already received 37,000 million euros as a reward for its reforms, more than half of the total aid provided, 69,000 million euros which, after the latest adjustments, will rise to 77,000 millions.
But not all the measures have the same depth or the same weight within the reform objectives to which the Next Generation funds are conditioned, hence the need to weigh them. Thus, according to the new guidelines, Brussels will apply the maximum penalty if Spain is unable to adopt the reform of the pension system to which the payment of the fourth tranche of aid to Spain is conditioned, and the Government chooses not to wait and ask for a partial refund. It is a strategy that until now it has never followed (it has only requested disbursements when it has estimated that it had complied with everything agreed and Brussels would give the green light to its request). The punishment would be similar if the application of the reform did not meet the objectives.
In case of problems, Brussels will give the country in question six months to correct them but, in the meantime, it will freeze the amount at which the measure is valued. In case it is not resolved on time, it will be deducted from the amount assigned to the country in future payments. The amount of the sanction will take into account whether it is a small investment, the approval of a reform or the final step of its application.
In the case of the pension reform, due to its impact on "the challenges identified in the specific recommendations for each country", Brussels will apply the maximum penalty in accordance with the formulas published yesterday to weigh the reforms. The EC has adopted the communication two years after the adoption of the funds and during the visit of the budget control committee of the European Parliament to Spain, a mission marked by political tensions and discontent in this institution and the Court of Auditors of the EU because Brussels had not previously approved this measure or does not yet have a centralized information system on the deployment of funds.
