What options does Sánchez have to prevent pensions from decreasing in February?

BarcelonaPensioners received their January pensions a few days ago, with the corresponding CPI increase. But in a few weeks, they could lose purchasing power after Congress rejected the decree that included the pension revaluation this Tuesday. What options does the Spanish government have to avoid this?

Considering that the same situation occurred last year, the first option is the clearest. Together and the PP, who voted against the decreeThey are demanding that Pedro Sánchez put the decree back to a vote, this time removing from the text issues unrelated to pensions, such as measures to prevent the eviction of vulnerable people. In this way, the Council of Ministers could approve a new decree, which would come into effect immediately and would need to be ratified by Parliament within a month. If it only includes the pension increase, the PP and Junts have already indicated they will vote in favor.

The other option is to negotiate this new decree with Junts in order to approve, in addition to pensions, other points that do not provoke outright rejection from the Junts members. This is the solution that was found last year, when Junts also voted for the omnibus decree because they considered it a catch-all: at the end of January, the agreement was formalized with a new, reduced version of the decree. This decree mainly included the pension increase and transportation subsidies, without some of the fiscal or economic measures that Junts rejected. This allowed Congress to finally approve the text with the votes of Junts and also those of the PP. However, Junts had not yet announced that it was breaking off negotiations with the Sánchez government and definitively moving into opposition. What will Carles Puigdemont's party do now?

Sánchez still has a third way to raise pensions, although politically it would be the most damaging for him. Both Junts and the PP separately registered a bill to guarantee, linked to the CPI, an automatic increase in pensions each year. This route would also be the slowest because it would involve a series of parliamentary procedures that the government decree does not have to go through.

Current position of Junts and the PP

In this scenario, what do the PP and Junts have to say? The Junts spokesperson in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, blamed the PSOE on Tuesday for the dismantling of the social safety net, arguing that they had combined pension increases with a ban on evictions and utility shutoffs for vulnerable people into a single initiative. "Yes to pensions, but no to jobs," she asserted in response to criticism from the Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who accused them of taking away "the 50 euros that pensioners were already receiving in their pensions." Both Junts and the PP link the anti-eviction measures—focused on protecting vulnerable families—with a covert legalization of jobs. "They can't force us to vote yes to a situation where you can't do anything if someone occupies your apartment and doesn't pay the rent. Helping vulnerable people is important, yes. And that's the responsibility of the government, not the small landlord. Abandoning people who suffer from squatting and non-payment is unacceptable," Nogueras stated clearly during the plenary session.

Just after the 2.7% increase for pensions, which had already come into effect, expired, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, also spoke out, denouncing Sánchez for turning pensioners into "hostages" in order to mix employment with pensions in the omnibus decree of social shield.