Who will be able to enjoy the 240 euro internet bonus?

The Council of Ministers approved on Tuesday a royal decree law that intended 10 million euros per year (30 million until 2023) of European funds to the creation of “connectivity bonuses for vulnerable groups. “This is an aid of 240 euros per year for families at risk of poverty that will be managed by the autonomous communities between now and December 31, 2023, according to this Wednesday the Official State Gazette (BOE). The regions will be in charge of designing the criteria for distribution, verification and control of the program in order to distribute 125,000 bonds in the next three years. This aid is part of component 15 of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

The digital voucher plans to finance the contracting of new services broadband connection or increasing the speed of those already hired from a fixed location with a minimum speed of 30 Mbit per second downstream, supplied with the most appropriate technology in each case in order to respect the principle of technological neutrality, and will be destined to natural persons of family units that have been identified as vulnerable. It will be delivered to the applicant who is part of vulnerable groups for a total annual amount of 240 euros to be distributed in twelve monthly payments, in such a way that a monthly reduction of 20 euros in the invoice issued by the operator-collaborator of the program provided for in the following article.

In the absence of knowing the procedure that each community will follow to identify vulnerable families, the distribution of funds has already been carried out according to the INE data on the population at risk of poverty (the percentage of people who live in households whose total annual equivalent income is below the poverty line). According to this, Andalusia will take 22.42% of the total budget (6.7 million euros to be distributed in three years) to grant 28,019 bonds among its population; the Valencian Community 10.09% (3 million euros), which will allow it to distribute 12,612 bonds, and Catalonia, 9.08% (2.7 million euros) to distribute 11,354 bonds.

103,125 bonds in three years

In total, the regions have agreed to share 103,125 bonds in the next three years in Spain, which means an expenditure of 24.75 million euros of European funds, at a rate of 240 euros per year for each household. The rest of the bonds, up to the 125,000 that can be delivered, will be distributed in 2023 among those autonomous communities and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla that have reached a minimum percentage of 90% of the number of accumulated actions corresponding to 2021 and 2022.

Although the BOE does not establish the criteria to be followed by the autonomous communities and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla to determine which households are considered vulnerable, it does warn the regions that they must include criteria “to improve the gender impact, in particular, incorporating the intersectional gender perspective to include especially vulnerable groups of women: women victims of gender violence, women with disabilities, long-term unemployed, single-mother families, older women in single-person homes, migrant women, including temporary workers, refugees and those belonging to minorities, among others “.

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In addition, the communities will be in charge of design a system for transferring quantities due to operators subscribed to the program, which allows “agile, transparent, safe and reliable processing of all phases of its execution”. Operators who “wish” to collaborate with the digital voucher program for vulnerable groups must register in the Registry of operators-collaborators which will be enabled for this purpose in each autonomous community and in the cities of Ceuta and Melilla.

The coordination and monitoring of this program of digital vouchers for vulnerable groups will be carried out by the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures.