Hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, Spain is the first European country to lay the foundation for universal income. The health crisis has also reopened the debate about a living wage or unconditional living allowance in France and elsewhere.
Before the pandemic, the question of universal income was at the heart of the agreement between Spain’s ruling socialist party and the radical left-wing Podemos party to form a coalition. Unemployment figures have reached record levels in Spain since the beginning of the outbreak: according to the ministry of social security, 900,000 people have lost work between mid-March and April 1, which surpasses the number from the 2008 financial crisis.
Joan Cortinas-Munoz, a researcher at the Centre of Sociology at Sciences Po Paris points out that Spanish regions, which enjoy administrative autonomy, have established their own minimum allowance programs, with the requirement that recipients are looking for work, since the late 1980s. The Spanish government has announced that its universal income program will complement these regional systems.
Numerous voices are calling for a universal income mechanism. In an open letter circulated on Easter Sunday, Pope Francis wrote in favor of a universal basic wage to “honor the essential and noble work” of low-income workers. “Street vendors, scrap merchants, stall keepers, small farmers, construction workers, garment workers, various caregivers” are “totally invisible in the system”, said the head of the Catholic Church.
In France, the idea of universal basic income is not new. But it is newly resonant as the health crisis has demonstrated the vulnerability of workers in precarious jobs. “Those without access to partial unemployment or retirement benefits, like deliverers for digital platforms such as Deliveroo, have no financial guarantees if they stop working to protect their health,” said Nicole Teke, the spokeswoman for the Mouvement Français pour un Revenu de Base (French Movement for Basic Income, or MFRB), an organisation created in 2013.
In June 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron launched a dialogue around a universal activity income to merge welfare, housing allowances and the state’s activity bonus. According to its contours, which are still unclear, beneficiaries will commit to not refusing more than two job offers. “Universal income, as we understand it, will not be implemented by the current government,” said Trek.
In its forecast of April 15, the International Monetary Fund’s expected Spain’s public debt to increase to 113 percent from 95 percent in 2019. In France, where more than nine million employees are on partial unemployment, the debt is expected to jump 17 points to 115 percent of gross domestic product in 2020.
Source: France24
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