In 2016, according to the draft State Budget, the planned reduction in the deficit will stem firstly from lower public spending, whose ceiling for the year as a whole, excluding that derived from local and regional government financing arrangements, will entail a reduction of 4.4% in relation to that set for 2015. The key expenditure-side measures are the 1% increase in the remuneration of public sector employees and the refund in 2016 of the remaining 50% of the extra salary payment eliminated in 2012. With regard to public employment, a standard 50% replacement rate has been established for public-sector vacancies, rising to 100% in priority sectors. Overall, these measures would lead to growth of 2.7% in wage expenses in the State Budget relative to the 2015 Budget outturn projection. The restrictions on current expenditure on goods and services are maintained, with a 14% reduction. Notable with regard to the Social Security system is the 0.25% revaluation of pensions, in keeping with the provisions of the 2013 reform. The projected growth in spending on contributory pensions in relation to the initial 2015 budget is rather higher, at 2.8%. This is as a result of the foreseeable increase in the number of pensions and of the substitution effect in terms of new pension claimants as opposed to deregistered pensioners, meaning that the weight of pensions spending relative to total consolidated spending of the State and Social Security system rises to 38.5% (37.8% in 2015).
Within the Eurosystem, the ECB has established a high-level task force to prepare a comprehensive analysis of the possible benefits and challenges related to retail CBDC, to be discussed in coming weeks within our Governing Council. • In this journey, we must set up appropriate synergies between public and private actors. Unequivocal support should be given to the European Payment Initiative (EPI): this project is essential for the safety, the rapidity and the European sovereignty of payments. Success of EPI is determined by (i) access to a large customer base, (ii) adherence of large merchants, and ultimately interoperability should EPI have ambitions to develop outside of Europe. • Let me stress there is no contradiction, as sometimes feared by commercial banks, between considering a euro-CBDC and supporting EPI. We may probably need both, and build complementarity. My preference would be to seek a renewed public / private partnership for the dissemination of central bank money in a retail form. Possible impacts on the banking sector could be reduced with different tools: for instance, limiting the quantity of digital euro in circulation would prevent excessive shifts of commercial bank money into digital euros. For the Eurosystem, this strategy would imply to clarify the interplay we would like to put in place between EPI and the CBDC, thus validating an intermediated model while providing enough customer proximity and value added to intermediaries (like front-end solutions).