Balearic finance and pensions affected by Congress decree rejection

The stalled increase in pensions should prove easy to resolve. | Gemma Andreu

Andrew EdePalma23/01/2025 08:39

On Wednesday, Spain's Congress voted against the Spanish Government's 'omnibus' decree, so called because it covers multiple measures in a single regulatory package. The intention of this decree was to enable the simultaneous implementation of several amendments, thus speeding up the whole legislative process by avoiding individual parliamentary processing. There was an omnibus decree a year ago. On that occasion it went through thanks to support from Junts per Catalunya. The latest decree didn't receive the backing of Junts. With the Partido Popular and Vox having been against, the government was defeated by six votes.

What this does is to paralyse all the measures contained in the decree. It doesn't mean that they won't eventually be approved, but in order to enable approval, the government will either have to issue a revised decree or individual decrees. A major item concerns pensions. There are almost 188,000 pensioners in the Balearics. They will not now receive an increase that was due to have taken effect this month. This equated to 517.30 euros for the whole year.

There should be a reasonably quick fix for this, the PP and Junts having signalled that they will back an individual decree. Resolving other items may not be quite so straightforward, one being approval of advance payment under the system of regional financing. As the budgets for 2025 haven't themselves been approved, regional governments would receive the same as in 2023 (these accounts are still in force). In the case of the Balearics this amounts to 153.50 million euros.

Other measures affected include the 'minimum vital income', subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles and for energy-efficient buildings, aid for those affected by the floods last October, and public transport subsidies. The latter include the subsidies for free public transport in the Balearics - buses, trains, metro. José Luis Mateo, the Balearic Government's minister for transport, while critical of the Sánchez government, has issued an assurance that transport will still be free in 2025. He said on Wednesday that the PP will present a motion in Congress "to consolidate free transport in the Balearics and the Canaries".

Meanwhile, one of Spain's largest unions, the CCOO, has attacked the "irresponsible political tactics" of the parties who voted against the omnibus law. The union points out that increases in minimum, non-contributory pensions and the minimum vital income, as well as measures to reinforce social security revenue will not come into effect. The CCOO is calling on the government to push these through "in the shortest possible time", especially those that affect the most vulnerable groups.