The sustainability of the pension system – i.e. certainty as to the ability to fund it appropriately – is essential for giving stability to public finances and for the credibility of any programme to consolidate total public spending. For the system to be sustainable, it must find a way to accommodate its key elements, namely the retirement age, the means of calculating pensions and the so-called "sustainability factor". I hope and trust that political forces will continue working on this delicate and very important matter, in the spirit of the Toledo Pact agreed almost 20 years ago, and which has repeatedly been supported by our parliamentary institutions. The major budgetary figures and the macroeconomic aggregates for 2014 The 2014 Budget is the first to be drawn up following the entry into force of the latest European budgetary governance reform, which introduces into countries' budgetary procedures an assessment by the European Commission of draft general government budgets. In Spain's case, this reform will lead to the availability of a single document drawing together the main budgetary items of all levels of government, i.e. one that includes the regional governments. In a country as decentralised in terms of public spending as Spain, as decentralised or more so than other countries with a federal political structure, the preparation of this documentation is a fundamental requirement for the appropriate assessment of budgetary forecasts. According to the agenda set, this document will be available, at the European level, in the coming days.
Thus, after the May cut in rates, in July the ECB announced that the Governing Council expected rates to remain at the new level, or at a lower level, for a protracted period. In any event, the contribution monetary policy can make to resolving the problems at the root of the crisis is limited, and can hardly go beyond providing the time needed for other economic policies to bear fruit, policies that do have the wherewithal to curb these problems. For full normalisation of the area to come about, Member States must successfully see through the adjustments to their domestic economic policies to adapt them to what a monetary union requires to function. From this perspective, I believe we should assess the progress made towards banking union in Europe. In the coming days, the European Union Council will approve the legislation to underpin the creation of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). That will formally set in train the process that will culminate in the assumption, by the ECB, of microprudential supervision in the euro area in autumn next year. There is virtual consensus around the conviction that the banking union will be a decisive instrument for breaking the loop between banking risks and sovereign risks, enabling the degree of financial fragmentation still prevailing in the area to be reduced and, we trust, ultimately eliminated.