After an express negotiation in the last hours, the Ministries of Labor and Economy have closed an agreement on the unemployment benefit reform that was approved this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers. It was a key issue because it is part of the commitments with Brussels, which required closing this reform before the end of the year to aspire to the full collection of a new payment of 10,000 million euros. Both departments consider that their demands are met and both have relented.
The subsidy, which is received once the unemployment benefit ends, will increase its amount and also the number of recipients. If it is currently 480 euros (80% of the IPREM), it will become 570 euros during the first six months, to be gradually reduced. In the next half year it will be 540 euros and for the rest of the duration of the benefit, one more year, it will remain at the current 480 euros. The Ministry of Economy is satisfied with this decreasing path.
On the other hand, its coverage is increased because unemployed people under 45 years of age without family responsibilities are included in the subsidies (until now they were excluded), and protection is incorporated for temporary agricultural workers and cross-border workers from Ceuta and Melilla.
Another important point is that it will be possible to make the receipt of the subsidy compatible with a salary during the first 180 days, as a formula to facilitate the transition of the unemployed to employment. This was one of the requests of the Ministry of Economy. An additional element is that the month-long wait to access unemployment is eliminated. The system is also simplified.
Economy has managed to incorporate into the reform a reinforcement of the subsidy collection. Specifically, the benefit will be linked to an activity agreement and will be reviewed quarterly. In addition, the beneficiary will have the obligation to present the Income Tax Return. The new configuration of the subsidy also incorporates a gateway for those beneficiaries who have the right to receive the Minimum Living Income.
This reform has caused a confrontation between the Ministries of Labor and Economy, which maintained divergent approaches, with Yolanda Díaz insisting on increasing the amount of the perception and its recipients, and on the other hand, Nadia Calviño highlighting the aforementioned issue of compatibility between subsidies and salary to stimulate the incorporation of unemployed people into the labor market.
Finally, the agreement increases the amount of the benefit but establishes the aforementioned decreasing scale, with an amount that is reduced as the subsidy is prolonged. And as regards the period of compatibility between the collection of aid and the receipt of a salary, it remains at six months, an intermediate zone between the 45 days that Labor proposed and the year that Economy defended.
The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, has explained that the reform of this subsidy will mainly benefit women, those over 52 years of age and autonomies with a great impact of unemployment, such as Andalusia, Madrid and Catalonia. The Minister of Labor has also quantified the surplus in the Public Employment Service (SEPE) at 7.7 billion.
