The Government has announced that Public employees who are parents in 2019 will enjoy eight weeks of paternity benefit, 12 weeks in 2020 and 16 in 2021, to match maternity.
And this benefit will be a reality, although the agreement between political groups to move forward with budgets does not prosper next year, as stated by the Minister of Territorial Policy and Public Function, Meritxel Batet.
Meanwhile, the rest of the non-civil servants parents will have to wait to see what happens with the budgets, which contemplate the equalization of paternity and maternity leave to 16 weeks.
In Babies and more The government wants to match maternity and paternity leave and universalize education from zero to three yearsThe current paternity leave model includes six weeks mandatory and non-transferable for the mother versus five weeks for the father, voluntary but not transferable. There are others 10 weeks that are interchangeable, although according to official data only two percent of parents assume them.
Weeks not simultaneous with the mother
The agreement signed yesterday between the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Public Function and the unions establishes that the new permits for public employees of the General State Administration (civil servants, statutory or labor staff) they will not be transferable, to guarantee “Co-responsibility in the care of the child by both parents”:
The father should take the first four weeks after delivery simultaneously with the mother and uninterrupted.
The remaining four weeks must be enjoyed before or after your partner, never simultaneously.
Minister Meritxel Batet has indicated that "The Central Administration has to set an example", as a first step to reach the equalization of all working parents and "advance equality policies for men and women".
But this will is still far from the 20 weeks enjoyed by the officials of Andalusia and the 16 weeks that the parents of the Basque Country will have from the last quarter of 2019.
In Babies and more, parents in the Basque Country will have a 16-week paternity leave from autumn 2019The official estimate speaks of 3,000 annual parental leave for public employees and a cost of 12 million euros when the total equalization of paternity and maternity leave of 16 weeks is reached.
Spanish parents who are not civil servants will have to remain pending to know if Spanish politicians take forward the budget item that would match their permission with that of their partner, after the birth of their child.
All this after the blow of the Constitutional Court that ruled that "It is not discriminatory that the paternity leave lasts less than the maternity leave."
And future mothers seem to have to wait even longer to get that Maternity benefit is extended to six months, as recommended by the Spanish Association of Pediatrics.
Photos | iStock On Babies and More | Paternity benefits exceed maternity leave for the first time, Ikea increases paternity leave for its employees in Spain to seven weeks
