Portugal's New Single Social Payment Lasts 12 Months, and the Unemployment Subsidy It Absorbs Lasted Up to 24
The CGTP wants the social unemployment subsidy taken back out of the Prestacao Social Unica before it starts paying on 31 December, setting out where duration, value and the crediting of contributions all move against the claimant.
When President António José Seguro promulgated the decree-law creating the Prestação Social Única (Single Social Payment, or PSU) this month, he attached a warning: no simplification should translate into a reduction of social protection. On Monday the CGTP-IN (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers) produced the first detailed worked example of what that might look like, and asked for one of the thirteen absorbed benefits to be taken back out.
It is the subsídio social de desemprego, the means-tested social unemployment subsidy paid to people who either never built up enough contributions to claim ordinary unemployment benefit or who have exhausted it. The union wants it removed from the PSU's scope and returned to the unemployment protection regime for employees, "where it belongs and from which it should never have left".
The argument turns on a hybrid
The CGTP's case is that the subsidy is a mixed benefit. It behaves like a contributory payment, because access requires a prazo de garantia, a qualifying period of actual contributions. It also behaves like a non-contributory one, because it is means-tested. Sitting inside the unemployment regime gave recipients the same standard of protection as people drawing full unemployment benefit: comparable duration, a defined value, and the crediting of contributions by equivalence. The PSU is unambiguously a non-contributory solidarity payment, and moving the subsidy into it, the union argues, is unequal treatment of workers who did pay in.
Three numbers where the transfer bites
Duration. The PSU is granted for 12 months and renewed if the conditions still hold, and its unemployment top-up, the majoração por desemprego, runs for six. The initial social unemployment subsidy runs a minimum of 15 months and a maximum of 24, depending on the claimant's age and contribution career.
Value. The subsidy is a fixed amount: 80% of the Indexante dos Apoios Sociais (Social Support Index, or IAS) for a claimant living alone, which is €429.70, and 100% of the IAS, €537.13, for one with a household. The PSU is a differential payment: the gap between assessed household income and a reference value set at 50% of the IAS, about €268.60, before top-ups. The union's conclusion is that "in many situations, and regardless of the unemployment top-up, which is not always due, it seems inevitable that the new payment will be worth less". Because the top-ups depend on individual circumstances, it adds, comparing the two regimes is hard by design.
Contribution record. Under the PSU, crediting contributions by equivalence "simply ceases to be possible". Fewer registered contributions means a shorter contributory career and potentially a smaller pension decades later. That is the longest tail here, and the part least likely to show up in any transition-year comparison.
A contradiction the union puts last
The CGTP saves its sharpest point for last. Even though a mixed benefit is being replaced by a purely non-contributory one, the PSU still requires 120 days of contributions in the 12 months before unemployment to unlock the top-up. The contributory condition has survived inside a payment that is no longer contributory; the protections that justified it have not. The union calls this "a real contradiction".
What happens next
Nothing immediately. As we reported when the decree-law took effect on 14 August, the PSU reaches no household until 31 December. The Labour Ministry maintains that 94% of beneficiaries will keep or increase what they receive, with spending rising about €50 million a year against the thirteen allowances being merged. A ministerial portaria carrying the operational detail has yet to be published, and that is where a change of this kind would land.
For anyone drawing or approaching unemployment support, the practical point is that the two systems are not interchangeable and the switchover date is fixed. Until 30 December the rules are those of the existing regime, and the value of nearly everything in both is pegged to the IAS.
