The Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, Ana Mendes Godinho, said today that the Government does not want to harm anyone in the implementation of the change to social support, adjusting the amount to the highest reference billing, whether 2019 or 2020.
"What the Government intends to do is to ensure that it can even be the higher value, so that no one, with this amendment now approved, gets paid less," said Ana Mendes Godinho at a press conference to present the balance of social support, which took place today at the Ministry of Labour, in Lisbon.
According to the minister, with the legislative amendment that changes the reference period for calculating support for 2019 invoicing instead of the last 12 months (which in 2021 would make the invoicing year 2020, a year with economic effects of the pandemic) "may make changes that for one person will give more and for other people will give less".
Despite referring to this possible situation, the minister calculated the impact of legislative changes voted by all benches, except the PS, and already enacted by the President of the Republic, and which the prime minister has already announced, at 40,4 million euros of expenditure. which will lead to successive inspection in the Constitutional Court for violation of the call brake law of the State Budget.
Ana Mendes Godinho also said that the average provision of support to self-employed workers under the meanwhile changed support was lower in December 2020 than in February 2021.
Although the new measure does not substantially change the universe of beneficiaries, as the calculation formula changes (moving to billing instead of Social Security contributions), several people may see the benefit improved by a few hundred euros.
"With this change, we cannot let anyone who has received more start receiving less," said the minister.
Asked about the number of beneficiaries of the Extraordinary Support for Workers' Income (AERT) and whether the dispute with the President of the Republic does not show a restricted nature of the measure, the minister said that “it was created as a residual measure that responded to all people who were in a situation of lack of protection”.
"The AERT was created as an instrument for those who were not covered by other measures", such as those who saw the end of unemployment and unemployment benefits, informal or self-employed workers and managing partners with a drop in turnover in 2021, he said .
"With this universe, at the moment, in January and February, we have 202 thousand people covered" by social support, corresponding to 122 million euros, said the minister, referring to the universe that AERT intends to cover, which totals 250 thousand people as provided for in the State Budget.
To the weekly Expresso, on Thursday, Ana Mendes Godinho had said that AERT itself had reached 39 thousand people.
“The universe of people that we predicted to cover by AERT, which at this moment had is a response of some different measures because we activated them at this moment”, he explained.
According to the minister, the objective was to ensure "that there was a measure that did not even address the break in activity," she said about the reactivation of support coming from 2020.
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