The socialist Spanish government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is facing accusations of embezzling billions in European Union coronavirus recovery funds to fill holes in its welfare and pension budgets. According to a report from Madrid’s El Mundo newspaper, the Palacio de la Moncloa used upwards of 8.5 billion euros ($10bn) of coronavirus recovery cash from Brussels in 2025 to subsidise budget shortfalls in the pension system for retired government workers, social security, and even the Post Office.
This comes in addition to the 2.4 billion euros ($2.8bn) euros in EU covid recovery funds identified earlier this month by Spain’s Court of Auditors as having been improperly diverted to pay for normal domestic spending by the socialist Sánchez government in 2024. “In the opinion of the Court, this action has been carried out under legal bases that should have been better justified, given that there is uncertainty about the applicability in 2024 of limitations on the use of surplus credits,” the audit found. The newspaper noted that the true scale of the financial tactic may be yet to be uncovered, given that the government has yet to account for another 3 billion euros ($3.5bn) in EU funds that may have been spent to pay for the pensions of Spanish bureaucrats, potentially taking the total to over 13 billion euros ($15.3bn).
