Experts from the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea) and EY Insights detect partial progress, but also growing imbalances still unresolved in the reforms of the Recovery Plan in education, employment, housing, and pensions. This is derived from a report released this Tuesday, which places employment as the area with the clearest improvements and housing as the field with the most negative balance.
The analysis, signed by Judith Arnal (Fedea), Ángel de la Fuente (Fedea and IAE-CSIC), and Juan Pablo Riesgo (EY Insights), examines the reforms of the Recovery Plan in four key pillars that accompany people throughout their life trajectory: education, employment, housing, and pensions.
Among the main conclusions, the document notes that in education the result is mixed, with learning as the great pending challenge. In the case of employment, the most evident progress is confirmed, while housing receives the most critical assessment. Regarding pensions, the authors emphasize that the reforms provide greater protection in the present, but at the cost of an increasing opportunity cost due to the lower availability of resources for other public policies.
Housing: the area with the worst diagnosis
In the housing chapter, the report highlights that prices increase by 12.1% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026 (compared to 4.7% in the EU), that there is an accumulated deficit of about 750,000 homes, and that the average age of emancipation stands at 30.2 years.
Since 1980, the real price of housing has multiplied by 3.5 in Spain, compared to 1.8 in the euro area, and for a tenant, buying a home represents almost 7 years of rent. According to the study, Law 12/2023 on Housing opts to intervene in rents when the underlying problem is one of supply: in areas with limits, the announced rental supply has decreased by more than 20%, compared to an increase of 3.9% in Madrid and a decrease of 7% in the rest of Spain excluding Catalonia.
Furthermore, the authors believe that the regulations approved in October 2026 intensify the intervention on prices (cap of 2% on updates), duration and extension of contracts, also incorporating compensation for termination and raising uncertainty, which will likely further reduce the rental supply.
"While the potentially useful measures to increase supply are modest, important measures to support demand are introduced. A stimulated demand in the absence of greater supply will result in new price increases," they have warned.
Pensions: greater current protection and future resource tension
Regarding pensions, the report reminds that the reform ensures the maintenance of the purchasing power of benefits, but leaves unresolved its long-term financial sustainability. The additional revenues expected "are insufficient," according to experts, in light of the anticipated increase in spending, which would rise from around 13% of GDP to between 16% and 17% by mid-century.
"The safeguard clause agreed with the European Commission is barely being met, with regulatory development that has lowered its requirements, and complementary savings have not taken over: the duty to negotiate employment plans remains undeveloped," they have indicated.
For this reason, the authors demand to open a debate on the opportunity cost of dedicating an increasing portion of the budget to pensions at the expense of other priorities, and to agree on possible adjustments before any eventual activation of the safeguard clause forces them to be applied automatically.
NGEU Funds: transfers at risk and plan adjustments
In its overall view, the report details that, in the chapter on transfers from the "NGEU" funds, Spain has submitted all the planned requests, but has already lost 198 million for not reaching the milestone related to diesel taxation and maintains another 1,164 million at risk.
Specifically, 626.6 million correspond to the milestone for reducing temporary employment in the public sector, whose favorable evaluation was withdrawn by the Commission following a ruling from the EU Court of Justice, and 537 million are linked to the sixth request, for three investment targets that Brussels did not consider met.
Regarding loans, the renunciation has been voluntary: Spain ultimately retained 21,449 of the 83,160 million initially requested. The plan has undergone nine modifications; only the closure review of August 2026 altered 96 measures, among reforms and investments, and reduced the degree of execution of thirty of them: "part of the initial ambition was adjusted downward and to the timeline of the funds," experts point out.
According to the report, there are still about 22.900 billion net pre-financing to be received, pending evaluation by the Commission of the last request from the Government of Spain.
Softer conditionality than expected
The authors also conclude that the conditionality associated with the funds has been less strict than announced in the design of the mechanism. In practice, the milestones have generally been considered fulfilled by verifying that the approved rules incorporated the elements described in the Council Decision that greenlighted the plan, based on the proposals from the Government and the acceptance of the Commission, without analyzing in most cases their economic quality, implementation, or real effects.
"The Commission checked the correspondence with the country-specific recommendations when approving the plan, not when verifying its execution, and several reforms deviate from what those recommendations requested," they have pointed out.
"The reformist push must not stop"
In their conclusions, the experts emphasize that, although the "Next Generation EU" are running out, the reform process cannot be halted. "European funding ends in 2026 and the reforms are left in national hands," they have reminded.
Therefore, they demand that the next phase shift from reforms designed to meet formal milestones to reforms aimed at transforming results: basic skills, quality of dual vocational training, university governance, resources and evaluation in employment services, increase in housing supply, and a balance between the level of pensions and other public spending priorities.