The predominance of a ‘strong’ economy over a ‘weak’ social constitution: The legacy of the financial crisis in Spain

Abstract

In Spain, the economic crisis has generated a series of restrictive reforms, slashing the level of pensions, healthcare, long-term care, unemployment, social assistance, and family benefits. The majority of reforms do not stem from the Spanish parliament, but from the government, which has resorted to the systematic use of the royal decree-law as a legislative instrument to implement not only temporary reforms but also eminently permanent structural reforms. Spain’s Constitutional Court has validated the government’s use of the royal decree-law on very permissive grounds. This has led to the fracturing of the separation of powers and the distortion of the natural mechanisms for creating legislation, contending that extraordinary measures must be taken with extreme urgency. Furthermore, the Spanish Constitution was reformed in 2011, introducing the principle of budgetary stability. After this constitutional reform, the Spanish constitutional panorama is one where social and economic provisions coexist, but economic provisions prevail, creating an imbalance between the social and the economic. This predominance of a ‘strong’ economic constitution over a ‘weak’ social constitution was clearly manifested during the crisis, when all reforms in social law were subordinated to the economic rationale of controlling the budget deficit.

At a time when Europe is in the grip of a new crisis, it is especially useful to look back at the experiences of the European welfare states’ constitutions during the most recent financial crisis. This book provides unique insights by analysing social protection reforms undertaken in nine European countries, from both a social law and a constitutional law perspective. It highlights the mixture of short-term cuts in benefits and of structural changes in social protection schemes. The crisis might have helped to further the partial and temporary implementation of reforms, but it certainly cannot spare us from the debates and political compromises that are unavoidable in order to reform social protection thoughtfully and thoroughly. Moreover, the book records the outcome of relevant constitutional review proceedings and thereby demonstrates that, even if corrections remained restricted to relatively few cases, social rights matter. The financial crisis advanced their protection one step further, but left many questions open. One lesson is of paramount importance, also for helping us overcome the current pandemic crisis: we need a substantial and commonly accepted agreement in the Europe Union on how to balance the economy and social protection in the future.