{"id":453593,"date":"2026-05-14T17:00:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/05\/14\/caso-spagna-sulluso-di-fondi-recovery-per-le-pensioni-fitto-possibile-se-e-temporaneo\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T17:38:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:38:32","slug":"spain-recovery-pensions-eucommission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/05\/14\/spain-recovery-pensions-eucommission\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain case regarding the use of Recovery Fund money for pensions: Fitto says, \u201cPossible if temporary\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 “Although the payment of pensions and other forms of current expenditure is not eligible under the RRF funds,”\u2014that is, the resources from the Recovery Fund and the Recovery and Resilience Plans\u2014”it is possible for Member States to temporarily use part of the liquidity from these RRF payments to cover other budget items.”\u00a0Raffaele Fitto<\/b>, Executive Vice-President of the Committee on Cohesion and Reforms,\u00a0commented on Spain\u2019s alleged misuse of funds from the Recovery and Resilience Facility\u00a0<\/strong>(RRF), the instrument at the heart of Next Generation EU, the recovery plan for the Covid-19 pandemic.\u00a0Furthermore, according to the Executive Vice-President, “such liquidity management operations by Member States are temporary and have no impact on the safeguarding of EU funds<\/strong>“.<\/p>\n

Last week, the newspaper\u00a0El Mundo<\/i><\/a>\u00a0published an article claiming to have obtained a list of budget amendments sent by the Ministry of Finance to the Congress of Deputies.\u00a0These documents reportedly reveal that at least\u00a0<\/strong>\u20ac8.5 billion will be diverted in 2025\u00a0<\/strong>to plug a gap in the pension system and fund social spending<\/strong>. Added to this is 2.4 billion reported by the Spanish Court of Auditors in 2024. “The Commission is aware of the issue,” explained Fitto, “and is examining the Spanish Court of Auditors\u2019 report.” Furthermore, “the Commission verifies national control systems,” specified Fitto, “and can intervene in cases of fraud, corruption, or conflict of interest.”<\/p>\n

Fitto made these comments yesterday (13 May) during the press conference to present the\u00a0Passenger package<\/a>. Meanwhile, the issue has sparked much controversy.\u00a0Andreas Schwab<\/b>, MEP for the Christian Democratic Union and Chair of the European Parliament\u2019s Committee on Budgetary Control,\u00a0stated<\/strong>\u00a0on Monday to\u00a0El Mundo<\/i><\/a>\u00a0that<\/strong>\u00a0“Member States have been granted a great deal of flexibility, perhaps too much<\/strong>.” Furthermore, according to Schwab, this is not a case of excessive flexibility, but “rather a use of funds that contravenes the regulations.” Pensions, he clarified, “are a fundamental obligation of every state and have never been part of the objectives of these funds.” The day before, Schwab\u00a0posted on\u00a0X<\/a>\u00a0a further comment on the matter: “If the European Parliament is asking for a larger budget for the EU Commission, then the use of funds must be managed properly. Otherwise, we lose credibility! And at the same time, the criteria for the next budget must also be very clear!”<\/p>\n

\n

Wenn das @Europarl_EN<\/a> einen gr\u00f6\u00dferen Haushalt f\u00fcr die @EU_Commission<\/a> verlangt, dann muss die Verwendung der Mittel \u201esauber\u201c verwaltet werden. Sonst werden wir unglaubw\u00fcrdig! Und gleichzeitig m\u00fcssen f\u00fcr den n\u00e4chsten Haushalt auch die Kriterien sehr klar sein! #RRF<\/a> @EPPGroup<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/ED4NSgqpOD<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Andreas Schwab @ASchwab.bsky.social (@Andreas_Schwab) May 11, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Madrid,\u00a0the Spanish government has denied any wrongdoing<\/strong>, with the\u00a0First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Economy<\/a>,\u00a0Carlos<\/strong>\u00a0Cuerpo<\/b>, stating that the government has no \u201cconcerns\u201d regarding the issues raised by the European Commission following the publication of the latest report by the Court of Auditors.\u00a0Spain is the second-largest recipient of EU funds for post-pandemic recovery, having already\u00a0<\/strong>received<\/strong>\u00a0\u20ac60.5 billion in grants and \u20ac17.3 billion in loans<\/strong>. The accusations against the Spanish government are reigniting the debate on shared debt. Alice Weidel, the leader of Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland,\u00a0<\/i>wrote on X that German taxpayers\u2019 money \u201cis funding socialist mismanagement in Europe.\u201d Meanwhile,\u00a0the<\/strong>\u00a0Spanish People\u2019s Party and Vox groups in the European Parliament have submitted formal questions to the Commission seeking\u00a0<\/strong>clarification on the management of Next Generation funds in Spain<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raffaele Fitto, Executive Vice-Chair of the Committee on Cohesion and Reforms, stated that \u201csuch liquidity management operations by Member States are temporary and have no impact on the safeguarding of EU funds\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7911,"featured_media":453558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[27047,34124,29524,26870],"class_list":["post-453593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-eu-en","tag-pension","tag-recovery-en","tag-spain-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7911"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453593"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453597,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453593\/revisions\/453597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}