This is how pensions will look in the Basque Country after the agreement between PNV and PSOE

The negotiations that the PSOE has maintained with the different parties that have given Pedro Sánchez the investiture as president of the Government have had several consequences that have affected the regions governed by these political formations.

In these negotiations the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) has played an important role. The Basque party committed the support of its five deputies in favor of the transfer of management of the Social Security economic regime.

This is an old demand of the Basque Country, since the measure was already contemplated in the Statute of Autonomy, in its article 18 (can be consulted in this link from the Official State Gazette), which explains that “In terms of Social Security, the Basque Country will be responsible for managing the economic regime of Social Security.“. This, along with the rest of the pending competencies, must be done within the non-extendable period of two years.

The text, drafted and approved in 1979, did not bring with it the effective application of this competence for the Basque Country. Now, 44 years later, this autonomy achieves a historic vindication that affects citizens in multiple aspects. For example, in pensions.

This transfer of the management of the economic regime of Social Security is, as its name indicates, the transfer of management to the Basque Country. Or what is the same: it will be the autonomous community that will be in charge of managing the payment of benefits, the collection of contributions or the hiring of personnel, for example.

This, applied to pensions, means that it will be the Basque Country that will be in charge of paying the pensions into the accounts of pensioners or its officials will be in charge of deciding whether or not a person can access a pension (but without imposing its own criteria, only applying those imposed by the State), for example.

Why the PSOE-PNV agreement does not break the single box

Thus, it is ruled out that, in terms of pensions, the agreement between PSOE and PNV affects in a more profound way. It is also ruled out that this is the end of the single Social Security fund, which, as explained in the General Law of Social Security in its article 21 (can be consulted at this link) that “the General Treasury of Social Security, as the single fund of the Social Security system, will carry out the liquidation and collection management of its resources, as well as the concepts of joint collection with Social Security contributions “.

If the single Social Security fund breaks down, this would imply that the money for contributions in the Basque Country would be managed directly by the community and would not remain in the hands of the State, which currently transfers the amounts necessary to pay benefits to all communities after collecting the system income.

Thanks to the single fund, Social Security covers possible imbalances between system income and the expenses necessary to pay benefits. This is summarized in article 74 of the General Law of Social Security, which explains that “the General Treasury of Social Security is a common service with its own legal personality, in which, by application of the principles of financial solidarity and single cash , all financial resources are unified, both for budgetary and extrabudgetary operations.”