Sánchez's social shield: shield of himself

"The most ambitious policy against severe poverty and social exclusion." These were the words used by Pedro Sánchez's government to announce the Minimum Living Income (MLI). Three years later, in 2023, only 40% of potential beneficiaries received it. And things were even worse for families living in severe poverty: the percentage of households with no income benefiting was barely 21%. Thus, the MLI has become a reflection of what this government and its policies represent: maximum propaganda, minimum effectiveness.

The rebuke it has just received from the Court of Auditors for its flawed design has been of a time. In a recently released report, the auditing body accuses the government of having incurred "significant deficiencies in its design." Among other things, it is disconnected from the main state strategies aimed at combating poverty and social exclusion. This disconnection should not be surprising either: from a Frankenstein government, with social policies spread across several ministries and several parties, only that can be expected: that is, patchwork measures.

The suit that the Court of Auditors is cutting from the government's throat is a time-tested one, and represents practically an amendment to the entire design of the plan. Starting with the fact that it wasn't oriented toward a specific objective related to specific poverty levels. Finally, it failed to address the very obvious and basic barrier of the digital divide, which, along with the excessive bureaucracy associated with the application process, has in practice been an insurmountable obstacle to accessing aid for precisely those households that needed it most. It has also endured a desperate response period (an average of 154 days in 2023, with 42% of cases resolved outside the maximum legal deadline of six months).

After criticizing the government for what it has done so far, the Court of Auditors is telling the government what it must do: up to twenty recommendations to ensure that the measure announced as the great dam to contain vulnerability doesn't end up excluding eighty percent of the households most in need of a minimum living income. But let no one be fooled: this government won't take note of anything, because Sánchez and his people are focused on what they are doing, and social policy only interests them rhetorically, to make loud announcements. What happens next, the actual results of their policies, matters very little to them.

In fact, the report from the highest oversight body is not the only one that has exposed the government's shame in this area. Amid corruption, Pedro Sánchez desperately clings to power under the flimsy pretext that he has a social agenda to pursue. But social policy is precisely one of the biggest failures of his administration. The European Commission itself has highlighted the poor results our country has suffered in some of the most important social policy indicators.

Thus, in addition to the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion, this Government fails without fail in early school leaving (13% of the population between 18 and 24 years old), in the employment rate for those aged 20 to 64, and in child poverty. It fails less catastrophically, but it also fails in the percentage of young people who neither work nor study, in the levels of inequality between rich and poor, and in the employment gap due to disability...

And as for housing, it's better to barely even talk about it. The government's law has been a resounding failure. Sánchez's credibility is so low that the recent proposal launched to the regional governments has been dismissed by the vast majority. But it's completely understandable: who would want to jump on the bandwagon of Sánchez's housing policies, which have racked up a record 44 consecutive quarters of price increases across all segments? And not just in the sale of new homes but also in existing homes. Likewise, all the measures to encourage rentals have failed, because they were expected to fail. They have only served to scare homeowners and drive many properties off the market.

So Sánchez's so-called social shield is nothing more than a shield for himself. It's sterile propaganda to justify himself and cling to power, amid the multiple scandals surrounding the government: corruption in the president's inner circle, occupation of institutions, harassment of the judiciary, amnesty, and concessions to the separatist movement and the heirs of ETA terrorism. The most disadvantaged are the ones with the least reason to support this government, which not only does nothing to alleviate their situation but also uses them in a spurious way to legitimize itself.

Rafael Belmonte Gómez , Deputy for Seville in the Cortes Generales