Legal insecurity as a result of the counter-reform of public retirement pensions: a violation of pensioners' rights?

Abstract

This article analyses the contradictions faced by the Spanish public pension system in recent years. The lack of agreed criteria has impacted not only central aspects of the system such as sustainability, sufficiency and deficit, but also the legal certainty on which the model rests. As a result, the instability generated is eroding the required legal basis of one of the fundamental pillars of the welfare state. Furthermore, most of the reforms (and counter-reforms) affecting the system in recent years have been carried out without debate, upon the order of a technocratic decision taken with haste and a clear lack of definition. We find ourselves now with a system trapped in a dangerous limbo, continually moving forward and backward without any agreed direction.
In particular, this article analyses the reforms (and counter-reforms) affecting the retirement pension system in recent years, which have resulted in a growing lack of credibility for the system in the eyes of pensioners and social security contributors. The question of which criteria should be employed to re-evaluate pensions, the delay in applying the sustainability factor, the extension of the previous criteria with regard to early retirement, the extension of partial retirement with a hand-over contract until 1 January 2023 or the reintroduction of compulsory retirement are all examples of this. Finally, the article underlines the breach of the mandate of Law 27/2011, informing the taxpayer of their pension amount, which constitutes yet another element in the development of the legal uncertainty surrounding pensions.