Social Rights, on wallet cards: “It is false that 50 million are going to be lost, at least due to the management of this ministry”

ABC accepts the work carried out, with the consultation of many regional and other sources, the internal documentation of the Red Cross that is reproduced, as well as maintains that the published information does state on several occasions that the data corresponds to late November, “two weeks ago”, so they may have suffered some slight modification in this period of time, as the Government of Murcia also indicated yesterday, which published with satisfaction that its execution, which two weeks ago was at 93% , as this newspaper reported in your article, they already amount to 100%.

The ministry’s considerations on the article are the following:

«We want to state that the information indicated in the headline of the news is completely false. 50 million euros have not been lost nor will they be lost due to the management of these wallet cardsand this is information that they have published without having previously consulted this ministry, which is a party involved (and pointed out by ABC) in this issue.

In the news, “autonomies consulted by ABC” are cited as sources.», without indicating what these autonomies are or offering more details about where that data comes from, nor about what date it corresponds to [En las páginas de Sociedad se indicó hasta en tres ocasiones, un extremo que se ha aclarado al ministerio]. This is important for several reasons:

There is still no official or definitive data about the money that has been spent in relation to this program. That is to say, all the data given today is provisional, and this is important to specify, something that is not done in the news that they have published, where, in addition, and we insist on this, data is given without explaining it. where it comes out

If provisional data is offered, we believe that it should be indicated to which date these data correspond. Its news mentions that “only 46 of the 95 million euros received from European funds for 2024 have been executed” without indicating the date on which this data was recorded. Obviously, it is not the same to offer data corresponding to the month of October as to provide data that has been collected in the month of December. Having said that, we already told you that the data they give of the 46 million is very outdated. This is something that we could have indicated to them if they had contacted us, as would have been desirable, before publishing information that directly implicated us.

As the news points out, the execution of the funds that the autonomous governments are carrying out It is being uneven. There are regional executives who are very behind in the execution and, therefore, their position on the management of this program is conditioned by this fact. In other words, it could be interpreted that they want to avoid their responsibility by blaming this ministry for their management. And if that is so, it is not appropriate for the news to only reflect his position without having had the option to refute it.

Beyond the fact that the 50 million figure is false, there is a second falsehood in the headline, as we said before, and that is that the money that is not spent in 2024 will be lost. No, it won’t be lost. No, at least because of the management of this ministry. And here it is important to specify something that is mentioned in the news, but what we don’t focus on enoughIn our opinion: the exclusive management of this program corresponds to the regional governments. What the Government of Spain has done, and this ministry in particular, has been to offer a resource to the autonomous communities that would allow them to launch this new system during 2024.

This resource consisted in an extraordinary grant to the Red Cross, granted through a Royal Decree approved on January 23, 2024, so that this organization collaborated in an extraordinary way with the regional governments in this first year of transition between the old FEAD program and this new wallet card program (Basic Program). In this way, this ministry gave the autonomies an extra year to develop their own systems, which they must manage in 2025 alone. What’s more, by recharging the cards quarterly, the regional governments have three more months of margin (until March 31) to launch their systems.

We remember this, that mentioned in passing in the newsto explain why it is false that the money that is not spent this year will be lost. And this is because the amounts that the regional governments receive for this program come from the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), whose requirements specify that the amounts allocated can be executed up to three years after their approval. The current program was approved in 2022 and, therefore, its term ends on March 31, 2025. That is, the regional governments would have the entire year 2025 to execute the money that they have not been able to execute in 2024. In other words, If an autonomous community has not been able to use all the money it had available for this year’s cards (those that it has distributed in collaboration with the Red Cross) they could use that money to load the cards that they distribute in 2025 with its own system. This is very important information that they would also have had if they had contacted us.

Likewise, we wanted to remember that the management of this program corresponds to the regional governments to focus on something that, although It is mentioned in the news itself, it is not relevant enough, According to our criteria: How is it possible that this program is a “fiasco”, as the headline says, when there are regional governments that have already executed it 100%? In other words, wouldn’t it be more correct to say that what has been a “fiasco” has been the management of those communities that have not achieved good levels of execution? And another question that arises: How do regional governments with a low level of execution explain that there are other regional governments that, under the same conditions, have managed to execute all or most of the funds?

We believe that it would have been pertinent to ask these questions to the “autonomies consulted by ABC”, such as the government of the Community of Madrid that the news mentions, before pointing out that this ministry is solely responsible.

Finally, we briefly specify some more issues that the news addresses such as the supposed delay of the system (in April the cards were already available), “the scarce money” that families receive (they receive much more with the cards than in food banks ), or the situation of people who are left out of the system (they will continue to be cared for by social services and food banks).