AGING AND PENSION SUSTAINABILITY IN SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE: STRCUTURAL REFROMS AND SOCIAL VULNERABILITY IN SPAIN AND ROMANIA
AGING AND PENSION SUSTAINABILITY IN SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE: STRCUTURAL REFROMS AND SOCIAL VULNERABILITY IN SPAIN AND ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: This article adopts a comparative perspective to examine how Spain and Romania address the challenges that demographic ageing poses for the financial, legal, and social sustainability of their public pension systems. Within the European multi‑pillar framework, it analyses the countries ‘divergent demographic trajectories, their institutional architecture and the main legislative reforms adopted between 2021 and 2026, with particular emphasis on the relationship between sustainability and the adequacy of pensions. The analysis of pension systems incorporates social vulnerability as a transversal legal category, linked to the European Pillar of Social Rights and the Council Recommendation on adequate minimum income, and highlights the persistence of pockets of poverty among pensioners, as well as the particularly marked impact of the gender pension gap. The article also explores specific forms of institutional vulnerability, particularly those affecting older migrants in a context of deficient coordination between social security systems. It concludes that a coherent reform agenda must explicitly integrate the dimensions of vulnerability and gender to reconcile financial sustainability with the effective enjoyment of social rights in Spain and Romania.

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