MADRID, 16 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Council of Ministers will approve this Tuesday a new aid package that will mobilize 3,000 million euros from the General State Budgets (PGE) to reduce the energy bill of 40% of the country’s households due to the impact of the crisis.
The package, announced last Thursday in the Congress of Deputies by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, arrives at the gates of a winter marked by the tension that is approaching in the energy markets due to the threat of a total cut in the supply of natural gas from Russia to Europe.
The measures thus come to put lyrics to the music of the contingency plan, called the More Energy Security Plan, which the Executive announced this week to reinforce the protection of citizens against the rise in prices caused by the war in Ukraine, within the framework of the European energy saving commitment to reduce gas consumption.
The new package reinforces the social bonuses -electric and thermal, which vulnerable or large families can take advantage of- and a new regulated rate so that households with a community boiler can benefit from savings of more than 50%.
In the specific case of the reduction for community heating bills, which will be in force until the end of 2023, this extension of the natural gas Last Resort Rate (TUR) protection scheme to a new neighborhood savings TUR will benefit 1.7 million homes.
Likewise, new discounts of 40% will be included in the electricity bill for 1.5 million low-income working households and the current social bonus, which is covered by 1.3 million households, will be reinforced.
This new category of consumer entitled to a 40% discount on the electricity bill will be able to take advantage of families with several members whose joint income is around 28,000 euros, according to the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, who added that the aid will also go to people who live alone and earn 16,000 euros, two people who live together and earn around 20,000 euros between them, two adults and a child who earn 23,000 euros or a family nucleus of several members whose joint income is around 28,000 euros.
The discount for vulnerable consumers will also be increased from 60% to 65%, the discount for severely vulnerable consumers will be raised from 70% to 80%, and the amount of energy entitled to these discounts will be increased by 15%.
Likewise, the aid of the thermal social bonus will be increased, which grows from the range of 35 euros to 350 euros per year -depending on the climatic zone of the beneficiary- up to the range of 40 euros to 375 euros per year.
These measures thus join those that the Government has adopted over the last year, such as the battery of tax cuts or the Iberian mechanism, and which, according to their estimates, have saved consumers 35,000 million since June 2021.
