Madrid (EFE) they never” stopped revaluing pensions “according to the CPI”, even with the previous revaluation index that marked a minimum of 0.25%.
In an interview on RTVE, Feijóo has maintained that the PP has always raised pensions according to inflation and that it has done so even when it was negative, increasing them by 0.25%.
“We have always done so, our party never stopped revaluing pensions according to the CPI and the only one that froze pensions was the PSOE, with Pedro Sánchez as a deputy in the Chamber”, he reiterated after pointing out that it is “absolutely correct” that the PP raised pensions in 2012, 2013 and 2017, after the presenter criticized that this was not the case in those years.
“I don’t know where you get that from… check the data”, he pointed out after pointing out that he would rectify if he was wrong.
“Since there is a newspaper library, you are going to check what I am telling you and if I am wrong I apologize and if it is you I hope they say so in this program,” he stressed.
After these statements, Feijóo has pointed out on social networks that “even when it was easy to freeze them as the PSOE did, we also uploaded them.”
This is how he has responded to the cascade of criticism that his statements have caused in some ministers, such as the head of the Treasury, María Jesús Montero, who has asked the leader of the PP to “apologize for lying again” or the second vice president and leader of Add, Yolanda Díaz, who recalled that “in three of the six years of Rajoy’s government, pensions grew below the CPI”.
Also the president of the Senate, Ander Gil, and the socialist spokesman in Congress, Patxi López, have criticized Feijóo’s “campaign of lies” and while Gil has said that “they left the pensioners trembling”, López has accused the popular of “making pensioners poorer” when they govern.
2013: PP pension reform
The Government of Mariano Rajoy approved in 2013 a reform of pensions in which they stopped revaluing according to the CPI to link them to the financial situation of Social Security with a new rate of increase that was at least 0.25%.
In this way, while Social Security was in deficit, pensions only increased that minimum of 0.25% annually.
During some years, such as 2016 and 2017, inflation was greater than the rise of that quarter point, so pensions lost purchasing power.
However, in 2014 and 2015 pensioners benefited from this increase model since inflation was below 0.25%.
Finally, in 2018, the Toledo Pact in Congress, with the support of the PP and almost unanimously recommended eliminating that revaluation index to re-link it to the CPI.