The bill on social welfare mutuals returns to Congress with key changes. The text includes a voluntary pathway to the RETA and strengthens supervision, but the debate focuses on whether to maintain alternatives as an option for professionals with multiple activities.
This week, the Congress of Deputies resumes the debate on alternative social welfare mutuals to the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA). The bill, which has already passed through the Senate, introduces relevant modifications affecting the voluntary pathway to the public system, the conversion of accumulated economic rights, and the exclusion of pensioners, except for those receiving a widow's pension. A new supervision regime is also defined.
However, the discussion goes beyond correcting past deficiencies. The real challenge, according to experts, is to determine whether alternatives still make sense in a labour market marked by diversity and multi-activity. Javier Varea, director of the Observatory of Complementary Welfare, argues that the answer is affirmative.
Multi-activity is an increasing reality. Lawyers who work for others while maintaining their own practice, engineers who balance individual projects with a job, architects, economists, or consultants whose careers are built through overlapping activities. It is not an anomaly, but rather the expression of a more flexible, specialised, and also uncertain labour market.
Multi-activity exists when a person simultaneously develops activities subject to different regimes: for example, the General Regime for salaried employment and a self-employed professional activity. This situation raises questions about how to coordinate contributions, rights, and benefits during increasingly non-linear career paths.
For certain regulated professions, the option to choose a mutual was not born as a privilege, but as a solution adapted to variable incomes and specific professional trajectories. In contexts of multi-activity, mandatory incorporation into the RETA, added to contributions to the General Regime, can lead to double contributions to the public system without a proportional improvement in future benefits. The mutual, on the other hand, allows the effort associated with independent activity to be incorporated into a capitalisation system more directly linked to what has been contributed.
For those who already contribute significantly as salaried workers, the mutual can effectively act as a second pillar. The General Regime continues to provide fundamental public protection, while the mutual entity covers liberal professional activity and helps diversify future income sources. This architecture aligns with a multi-pillar vision of social welfare: a solid public system coexisting with collective, complementary, and specialised instruments.
This does not mean ignoring the problems that have driven the reform. Some mutualists have suffered from insufficient contributions, poorly explained expectations, and benefits far from a dignified retirement. The voluntary pathway to the RETA is necessary for those who believe that continuing in the mutual is detrimental to their interests. The transfer of accumulated economic rights, with clear rules and without tax penalties, expands their capacity for choice.
This freedom must work both ways: those wishing to move to the RETA must be able to do so, and those preferring to remain in a solvent mutual must also retain that option, according to Javier Varea.
The text being debated in Parliament also points towards a progressive equalisation of contributions, higher minimum benefits, more transparency, and enhanced supervision. These are reasonable demands that need not weaken mutualism; they can help restore its credibility. The alternatives of the future should not be based simply on paying less, but on offering different value: flexibility, capitalisation, proximity, mutual governance, specific professional coverage, and comprehensible information about expected income.
Mutuals will need to explain better, manage prudently, and demonstrate results. Some will need to transform, collaborate, merge, or focus on specific services. They will also need to accompany hybrid trajectories, allowing coverage to adapt to stages of greater salaried dedication, entrepreneurship, or simultaneous practice. Flexibility must not be confused with insufficient protection; it must mean the ability to adapt within demanding standards of sufficiency and solvency.
Parliament thus has a broader responsibility than simply approving a pathway. It must prevent the redress of unjust situations from leading to a single model incapable of recognising the diversity of professional work. The evaluation of the alternative regime planned before the end of 2030 should explicitly analyse multi-activity and not be limited to comparing contributions. It should also assess the quality of benefits, efficiency, freedom of choice, and the contribution of mutuals to the diversification of pension savings.
Maintaining alternatives does not mean anchoring in the past. It means modernising an existing institution to respond to a contemporary reality. With sufficient contributions, transparency, supervision, solvency, and truly informed decisions, mutuals can continue to be a legitimate and socially useful option.
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