He attributes the lower number of beneficiaries of the mortgage support measures to the “good progress of the economy and employment”
June 26 () –
The First Vice President of the Government and Minister of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño, rejected this Monday the proposal of the Second Vice President and leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, to establish an extraordinary bonus of 1,000 euros to help vulnerable families pay their mortgages. in view of the sharp rise in interest rates.
Calviño, in statements to RNE collected by Europa Press, has stressed “that it cannot be a solution to use public money” to give it to the banks, but that it is the financial entities that must facilitate the relief and support measures for citizens .
The first vice-president recalled that injecting public money into the banks “was the PP’s solution during the previous financial crisis” and “there is no going back”.
“What we want is for the relief and support measures for the economy and citizens to be paid for by the banks. And I think that is fair and that is what we have to do. That is our economic policy response model , which is very different from what we saw after the great financial crisis. There the banks were rescued and we have rescued companies, citizens and workers. That is our approach and I believe that we must flee from all those measures that they return to give money to the banks”, he explained.
Calviño recalled that this week he has a meeting with the representatives of bank users, the elderly and bank employers, to see how the Codes of Good Practices signed with financial institutions and that have to do with the treatment of people are evolving. elderly and disabled; coverage of 100% of the territory with face-to-face financial services, and help for the families most affected by the rise in mortgages.
In this sense, the first vice president has indicated that, at said meeting, she will raise various issues with financial institutions and also “complaints” that she has received from users in order to continue advancing in solutions.
For Calviño, the Government did well to act preventively before the increase in mortgage prices occurred and has stated that, as the economy and employment are “doing better” than was thought last autumn, families have had to resort less to support measures for mortgage payments.
“The fundamental factor that makes us in a very different scenario is the good progress of the economy and employment. It is that last fall, when we made the estimates, we did not expect to be with 20,800,000 affiliates to Social Security. It is that we have 1,300,000 more people employed than before the pandemic. And wages are also recovering. That is what explains why families are in a better situation than the scenario that we had considered last fall,” he said. abounded.
In any case, Calviño has ensured that the measures that were agreed with the banks to alleviate mortgage holders affected by the rise in interest rates “still have a long way to go” because the Euribor has continued to rise and, therefore, many mortgages They will continue to be reviewed in the coming months.
This does not mean, he specified, that there is no need to continue working to ensure that the Code of Good Practices is applied and covers all the people who need it. “And this is precisely what we are going to address with the banks at the end of this week,” she pointed out.
PENDING DATA FROM THE BANK OF SPAIN
Calviño explained that he is awaiting a report from the Bank of Spain and other reports to see exactly if requests are being denied or if it is the citizens themselves who do not request it because they do not need it or because they believe that, in some way, it can prejudice them from accessing these measures.
What he is observing, he added, is that “there is a lot of change in variable-rate or fixed-rate mortgages and early amortizations.”
“That is another of the measures that we put in place, which this year, in 2023, is free. The change from a variable-rate mortgage to a fixed rate and early repayment must be free. And what citizens are doing is going these measures precisely to be able to remove this mortgage burden, because the majority of those who have variable-rate mortgages already have little left to pay on that mortgage and prefer to pay it off rather than continue having the risk of rising interest rates”, has remarked.
