It seems like a paradox, but receiving the Minimum Basic Income has plunged some vulnerable families into ruin. In recent years, the administration has required thousands of them to reimburse so-called undue payments. There are many cases and very varied, but in general it is due to the lack of coordination between administrations.
Even when beneficiaries inform the administration that they are receiving new income, managing entities take months, even years, to review the benefit, and when they do, they demand the return of the entire period, which is extremely difficult for vulnerable families to cope with.
The Ombudsman has just initiated an ex officio action that proposes limiting, through a legal modification, the obligation to return the Minimum Basic Income to vulnerable households when the good faith of the beneficiaries is proven or when the error is attributable to the Administration.
The IMV-Affected Collective, through the International ATD Fourth World Movement, filed a lawsuit with the European Committee of Social Rights against Spain for non-compliance with the European Social Charter and the violation of fundamental rights.
Modify the General Law on Social Security
The proposed legal modification would also affect other welfare benefits such as non-contributory disability or retirement pensions, or long-term unemployment subsidies.
This approach has been transferred to the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration so that it can assess addressing a modification of article 55 of the General Law on Social Security that obliges the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) to claim all debts, in all cases.
According to Ángel Gabilondo, “in recent weeks we have learned, through complaints received and the media, that IMV beneficiaries are being contacted to return what they have received in recent years as recipients of the Minimum Basic Income.”
"These are families without resources and in a situation, sometimes, of extreme need, who received this social benefit, and who have serious difficulties in facing the amounts that are now being claimed from them."
“Some of these families have contacted our institution exposing this circumstance. For this reason, we have sent our request to the Administration that in these claim procedures, the situation of economic emergency in which many of these families find themselves be taken into account, and that they not be required to return the amounts received,” Gabilondo points out.
The ex officio action is also directed to the Secretary of State for Labor, the management body on which the State Public Employment Service depends, to learn its criteria on the need to address the aforementioned legal reform given the jurisprudence in this regard.
Recent pronouncements by the European Court of Human Rights and the Spanish Supreme Court consider that it should be understood as disproportionate to claim the entirety of what has been received, as welfare benefits or aid, when the good faith of the beneficiaries has been verified or when the error has been committed by the Administration itself.
