The pension decree approved by the Renzi government will return only 12% of what has actually been lost by those who have been blocked by the revaluation of benefits exceeding three times the minimum approved at the end of 2011 by the Monti government and declared unconstitutional on 30 April by the Consulta. This was confirmed yesterday by Giuseppe Pisauro, president of the Parliamentary Budget Office, in a hearing in Montecitorio in the House and Senate Budget Committees.
Pisauro shares the decision to concentrate resources on the lowest incomes, but points out that now the "little treasure" mentioned in the Def no longer exists, so it will be more difficult for the government to eliminate the "safeguard clauses" that should be triggered - with tax increases - in the event of ineffectiveness of some revenue items.
In any case, according to Pisauro it would have been much worse if the Consulta's sentence had been fully applied: the PBO calculates that, net of the tax effects, the full recovery of the de-indexing suffered in the two-year period 2012-2013 was worth 17,6 billion for the 2015 (of which 4,5 billion permanent and the rest in arrears for the years 2012-2014) and 4,4 billion since 2016. The deficit would therefore have risen from 2,5% to 3,6% of GDP. The Renzi decree reduced the charges for 2015 from 17,6 to 2,2 billion (therefore only 0,13 points of GDP instead of 1,1). When fully operational, the impact on net borrowing – explains the PBO – should amount to 0,03 points of GDP, around 500 million.
"Like Upb - said Pisauro - we made our own estimate of the burden of the sentence and the effect of the decree on the basis, not of the heads count, as INPS was able to do, but on the basis of the distribution of pensioners in the various pension classes, and we obtain results very close to the official ones: the Government's estimate seems reliable".
Pisauro therefore certified that the programmatic objectives set by the Executive are "confirmed". But, he underlined, "there is a fact for the following years: the decree involves an annual burden of around 500 million". Given, he explained, "which is not seen in the decimals, but means a reduction in the margins for maneuver for new policies, margins which were made up of the improvement in the trends set out in the Def which it was envisaged to use to do various things, such as the disapplication of safeguard clauses” which affect the coming years.
"We were saying that there is always macro uncertainty or that some exogenous factor could have nullified the treasure and the ruling of the Consulta on pensions is one of those exogenous factors that made it vanish - added Pisauro with reference to the margin for maneuver indicated in the Def –. I don't want to be a Cassandra, but other exogenous factors could arise and worsen further, we honestly don't know, but I would avoid chasing episode by episode, on issues of a relatively modest amount, in any case, both with a plus sign and with a minus sign ".
