PNV will defend this week in the Congress of Deputies an unassigned proposal to request the renewal of the access system to the electric and thermal social bonus to simplify and speed up the process for those who need it.
The social bonus is a reduction in the electricity bill whose percentages vary, depending on the economic circumstances of the beneficiaries and established by the government for internal consumers.
To access it, it must be requested, processed, and meet the income requirements established to qualify as a vulnerable consumer. It can also be accessed without income criteria.
The nationalist party denounces that, according to data from the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) and a report published by ESade together with Oxfam Intermon, there are between 1.5 and 1.6 million homes in Spain benefiting from this bonus, when the figure should be around five million homes. PNV denounces that «bureaucracy» and «ignorance» are the reasons why households do not accept this aid.
In addition, the group emphasizes that there are people who have benefited from the social and thermal bonus simply by being part of the large families group, even though they have «much higher» incomes than those of a vulnerable household.
The government promised in 2023 to introduce new income criteria for large families, but so far no changes have been implemented. In this context, PNV indicates that the social bonus «does not meet the objectives for which it was conceived and it is necessary to reform its processing to make it more efficient and target precisely those households that need it the most.»
To achieve this, it proposes to reform the access system to the social bonus to simplify and speed up the process for those who need it the most. It also asks the government to redefine the requirements or criteria for large families to benefit from the social bonus by introducing standardization systems for family incomes, depending on the size and composition of the family unit, to allow for fair treatment of different family types and situations.
Finally, the Basque Party requests the transition from current short-term measures to studying and implementing structural and stable measures to combat energy poverty, especially for vulnerable groups and those most in need.
