The members of the Toledo Pact recently reached an agreement to establish what future public pensions will look like. A number of criteria were adopted for consideration by the Central Parliament.

There are certainly some positive criteria set, such as the annual increase in pensions, so as not to lose purchasing power, which will be implemented according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI); or that when determining the number of pensions, account is taken of the 25 most prosperous years in the labour history of each contributor. However, the central government immediately announced the replacement of those 25 years by 35, which would suddenly reduce the number of pensions.

It also has negative aspects. First of all, politicians should be asked to change the philosophy of setting public pensions, and that has not been addressed. Instead of changing the philosophy of public pensions and finding the additional public funds that have to be allocated for this, they will recognise that public expenditure is constant or rather invariable, and that amount will have to be distributed as long as pensioners are constantly growing.

The change in the philosophy of public pensions means that the pension service must be like any other public service. In other words, why is public or concerted education, justice, defence or health integrated into the state budgets and financed by general taxation and not the same for public pensions? To this end, public pensions should be recognised as a service of economic interest.

As a result of this treatment of public pensions, the Social Security budget would be integrated into the general budget of the State and the financial contributions of capital and workers will be integrated into public revenue.

Another point on pensions also gives rise to reflection and consists of the proposal to extend the retirement age. In addition, the prolongation of this age would entail a reward for more generous incomes. In my humble opinion, the decision to extend working time should be voluntary and, once a lot of years has been worked out, we should have every right to access the maximum pension and economically punish the person who wishes to retire later to leave jobs free. And early retirement should be totally banned, as was the case a few years ago; the exception is that after the failure of a company it would become older workers, because they cannot have access to another job.

On the other hand, the new Toledo Pact has also opened a space for opening the doors to private pensions and in this area we must follow the unions, who have the readiness to agree with their employers this type of pension, because in their constitution they like to participate in their management. On the other hand, we are surprised that employers want to promote private pensions through financial contributions, while they do not want to make any more contributions to consolidate public pensions. In addition, two types of workers, large and small, would appear on these pension funds, which would have difficulty in setting up these funds. Furthermore, when private pensions are promoted, there will be tax advantages to the detriment of the citizens, as the treasury will be carried out with less public money.

These are some of the issues that workers and pensioners, among others, have to take into account. Be careful, then!