On Wednesday the 27th, Lacalle received the leaders of the coalition parties at the residence of Suárez y Reyes, to present them with the preliminary draft of the Social Security Reform Law.
The meeting was attended by: the president of the Directory of the National Party, Pablo Iturralde; the Minister of Labor and leader of the Independent Party, Pablo Mieres; the general secretary of the Colorado Party, Julio María Sanguinetti; the senator and leader of Cabildo Abierto, Guido Manini Ríos; and the deputy of the People’s Party, Daniel Peña.
Rodolfo Saldain was also present, who was the president of the group of experts that for more than a year worked on the study and drafting of the proposal.
As indicated after the meeting, the reform seeks to modify the rules for accessing retirement from the year 2027, but a gradual transition between the two regimes will be established.
The Minister of Labor, Pablo Mieres, assured that the idea is to consecrate values of “equity, comprehensiveness and sustainability.”
He stressed that “all the social security subsystems are contemplated -including the Military Fund- with the idea of generating convergent criteria, which does not mean unifying but rather incorporating parameters from different regimes and moving them towards a common scheme in a reasonable time”.
gradual convergence
In his turn, Sanguinetti highlighted the will of the president and the coalition to modify the system. He said that the Colorado Party technicians “will study and make adjustments.”
The former president stated that the reform seeks “the financial rebalancing of the system and its sustainability, but not for this government and, perhaps, little for the next one, but for the new generations.”
He added that the current pension system is on the way to “definancing and crisis”, so a system towards rebalancing is being sought”.
He stated that the preliminary draft proposes a convergence system that is very gradual. “We are not talking about a drastic change in conditions, we are talking about 20 years to generate convergence, only in 2035.”
For his part, Iturralde conveyed the need to follow the path of social security reform and modify the current pension system.
“We want it to move forward, but not as a coalition, but for everyone: workers, businessmen and all Uruguayans, to recognize a problem that has been on the table for more than 20 years and it is necessary to modify it, but not for today, but for later, for the next generations”, he clarified.
Iturralde assured that no retiree who is receiving any type of remuneration today will have any reform of what he is receiving. All those who have acquired rights today maintain them and will maintain them for the next five years, in order to be able to retire in accordance with these same rules.”
Meanwhile, this Friday the 29th, President Lacalle will attend Huella de Seregni, headquarters of the Broad Front, to present the project to the president of the Broad Front, Fernando Pereira.
