MADRID, 31 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The PP Deputy Secretary of Economy, Juan Bravo, assured this Friday, in a press conference, that if the PP governs, it will negotiate a new reform in the Toledo Pact to repeal that of the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations, José Luis Escrivá, validated this Thursday in Congress.
Bravo has announced that if the PP wins the elections, it will submit a proposal to the Toledo Pact, based on reports from the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) and on job creation plans for 1.7 million unemployed, with the objective of increasing social security contributions by 16,000 million.
“When we arrive, we will sit down to talk in the Toledo Pact about what is the answer that really provides security. We are not going to apply a reform that nobody agrees with. It is not the formula”, reported the Deputy Secretary General for the Economy of the PP. Once this new reform has been “discussed” in the Toledo Pact, the PP “will repeal (Escrivá’s) and apply the alternative.”
Although Bravo has not specified what the opposition measures are for a future reform of the pension system, the ‘popular’ has insisted that his party will not cut them, and has recalled that they voted in favor of its revaluation with the CPI.
In addition, he has defended the reform of Mariano Rajoy in 2013, which helped “pensioners earn money” between 2013 and 2018, even with negative inflation and with a clause to avoid freezing pensions in the future.
Bravo has reproached the PSOE for doing the opposite during the mandate of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. “In 2009, he told pensioners to be quiet until 2025, and a year later, he froze them,” he added.
He has also pointed out that the Escrivá reform, in the additional provision, speaks of a possible reduction in pensions in March 2025, something that, in Bravo’s opinion, is “a time bomb for the government that comes after it”.
In his criticism of the Socialists, the PP’s Deputy Secretary of Economy has questioned the pension reform for lacking the endorsement of AIReF and other study centers such as Funcas, Fedea or BBVA Research. Along the same lines, he has made Escrivá ugly for having lied when saying that the reform has the endorsement of the European Commission, although Bravo has admitted that Brussels “possibly will endorse this reform.”
“If it does not have the endorsement of Brussels, AIReF or other organizations and we believe that it causes harm, we cannot vote in favour, but of course we believe that it has good things”, he acknowledged, while noting that the Government has changed the reform of Rajoy and Fátima Báñez “by ideology”.
Bravo has insisted in his press conference that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has lied to the Spaniards with the pension reform and with the labor reform.
The ‘popular’ considers that the labor reform of the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, “is no longer as good” as they said, and has referred to the fixed-discontinuous, the drop in hours worked and the slowdown in GDP despite the growth in the number of affiliates.
“Its great success is the discontinuous fixed ones and it has been shown that there are 450,000 who were not working, they were made up. It is a great make-up reform, it is a great make-up, but not a great reform,” Bravo said.
Despite the criticism, the PP’s deputy secretary of Economy has stressed that Díaz’s reform was elaborated on Báñez’s, “which is the good one”, so that, if they come to power, “something can be saved and others to incorporate”.
“We need to make reforms so that it is a dynamic market and we adapt to the needs that exist at the moment,” he said at the press conference.
Among the positive measures, Bravo has rescued the Temporary Employment Regulation Files (ERTE), which are “of Rajoy and Báñez” and, therefore, “a rule of the PP”.
Bravo commented at the press conference that the Spain 2050 Plan, prepared by the Government, contemplates economic milestones achieved in popular legislatures.
Specifically, he referred to the year 1996, when José María Aznar governed, and Spain began to join the euro, thanks to “PP policies completely different from those of Felipe González”, and the other was 2012, when Rajoy avoided “a possible intervention” by Brussels in exchange for “doing their homework, while Zapatero succumbed and allowed himself to be intervened”.
“What we are going to do are different, different policies, because we are different parties,” Bravo indicated.
