Within a series of social protection measures, through the Royal Decree-Law 2 / 2023, of March 16, modifications were established in the scholarship system. Although these changes were initially set to begin on October 1, 2023, their entry into force has been delayed until January 1, 2024, in order to give educational entities more time and facilitate the administration's technical adaptation. .
The affected people are those who carry out an internship within a training program, that is, those students who carry out internships with the aim of obtaining an academic degree at both the university and vocational training levels.
The big difference is that, until now, there was only an obligation on the part of the company to register with Social Security when the internships were paid. But As of January 1, 2024, all people who carry out non-work internships, whether paid or unpaid, must be registered with Social Security.
Deadlines for communicating registrations and cancellations of these unpaid internships will be the following:
- For the registration or cancellation to take effect from the actual date, no more than 10 days must elapse from the start or end of the registration.
- If more than 10 days pass, the registration or cancellation will take effect from the day of communication.
Although those registrations or cancellations that take place in the period from January 1 to March 20, 2024, exceptionally, may be communicated until March 31.
For paid internships, the deadlines for communicating registration or cancellation will be the same. Registration will be communicated prior to the start of the internship and cancellation can be processed up to 3 days later.
The protective action will be that corresponding to the general Social Security regime, but with some peculiarities, given that practices are excluded from:
- unemployment protection
- coverage of the Salary Guarantee Fund
- coverage for Vocational Training
- Intergenerational Equity Mechanism
Furthermore, in the case of unpaid internships, protection for temporary disability benefits derived from common contingencies is also excluded.
This means that they will not be able to receive any benefit related to the concepts we have mentioned above.
Recently in the RD-Law 8/2023, of December 27, in its ninth transitional provision, specifies how training practices will be quoted. It indicates that until the General State Budget Law for this year is approved, the contribution for carrying out training practices will be:
- Paid training internships: single monthly fees will be applied for common and professional contingencies corresponding to alternation training contracts. The minimum contribution base will be that corresponding to group 7.
These fees will be required to be made by the entity that finances the training program.
- Unpaid training internships: the contribution will consist of a business fee, for each day of internship, of 2,54 euros for common contingencies excluding temporary disability benefit and 0,31 euros for professional contingencies, without the maximum fee being exceeded. monthly for common contingencies of 57,87 euros and for professional contingencies of 7,03 euros.
The deadline to enter the fees will be quarterly as follows:
- Entry of fees for January, February and March will be made in April.
- Entry of fees for April, May and June will be made in June.
- Payment of fees for July, August and September will be made in October.
- Payment of fees for October, November and December will be made in January.
It is the company in which the internship is carried out that must comply with Social Security obligations.
However, the contribution during the internship period will have a bonus of 95% of the fees for common contingencies, when previously the bonus for external curricular internships was 100% of the fees, while extracurricular internships were not subsidized.
The obligation to contribute to unpaid internships is not retroactive. But it is possible that those people who within the last 5 years prior to the entry into force have carried out internships can sign a special agreement with Social Security so that the periods of non-work internships count for contribution purposes.
In conclusion, the Government, in an attempt to create social protection mechanisms, increasingly transfers obligations to the employer, which means more cost and bureaucracy in the preparation of practices, which translates into a sphere of disinterest on the part of the employer. for formalizing agreements with training entities.
Andrea Moreno Armero placeholder image
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