These trainee students, regardless of whether they receive a monthly stipend, are required to begin contributing to social security. The reform outlines pensions and fulfills years of government commitment that have faced delays. Depending on who the employer is for these interns, companies or universities will be responsible for contributions with bonuses reaching up to 100,000 euros. Most of the burden remains on public coffers. The measure will affect hundreds of thousands of students undertaking curricular or extracurricular internships in Spain each year.
The implementation of the new quotas will move forward independently of ongoing negotiations between the Ministry of Labor and social intermediaries regarding the new Scholarship Bylaws. These rules will cap the maximum number of extracurricular internships a student can undertake in a year and require employers to cover student transportation costs. On this issue, which has lagged for months, employers and unions are attempting to finalize the agreement and present it to Parliament soon.
University degrees, graduate and postgraduate studies, including vocational training, will be included in the social security system without removing their first work experience from coverage. For the 2023-2024 academic year, the system will extend to those who have gained experience but are not paid for it, in addition to those who previously received stipends.
The required contribution from students will be modest and will not include payments toward future unemployment benefits. The Government argues that scholarship holders should not be treated as salaried workers, noting that contributions should be limited to safeguarding wage guarantees and supporting vocational training. In the case of paid internships, contributions will also support temporary disability, known as the Intergenerational Equality Mechanism, which has been taxing all wage earners since the current year.
To overcome resistance raised during the negotiating process, the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities and the Ministry of Universities offered bonus opportunities up to SSI, with 95 percent paid in installments.
Companies must enroll students as soon as internships begin, maintain their enrollment for the duration, and terminate the enrollment after completion. However, contributions will be paid quarterly rather than monthly, as is typical for workers. In other words, the obligation to contribute will accumulate and be paid to the Social Security Administration in April, July, and October as applicable.
Delayed Reform
The government has long pledged that all students would contribute as part of their apps. This goes back to the first term of Pedro Sánchez before the coalition with Unidas Podemos. Magdalena Valerio placed the regulation on the table to generalize contributions. It was estimated that about half a million students across Spain would be affected and that employers would need to contribute, on average, around 51 euros per month per intern.
Still, the regulatory framework for these contributions was suspended and could not be enacted until the first pension contract reached this legislature, under minister José Luis Escrivá and social workers, by June 2021. Plans then stalled and were postponed to form part of the new reform package. The current commitment is to have all students contribute starting with the next academic year, October 2023.