Juan A. Esteban

Contemporary artist and independent researcher.

A stone figure at the foot of a long staircase with uneven steps that rises towards an open arch under a large moon; halfway up, a step is missing and another figure places a slab to cover it.

Public notebook

When a procedure stops being neutral

A social right may be recognised by law, have a budget and still remain beyond the reach of some of the people it intends to protect. The procedure also determines who can exercise it. Requiring time, stability, documentation, digital competence and the capacity to sustain a prolonged administrative relationship favours, in practice, those who already possess these resources.

There is no need for an intention to exclude. Nor does every bureaucratic difficulty constitute exclusion, and not all non-take-up —the lack of application by potentially eligible households— is explained by the procedures. The question is when the costs of the procedure are distributed in an unequal and predictable manner, and what the institution does when it is aware of this inequality.

The cost of applying

Research into administrative burden distinguishes three costs in the relationship between the citizen and the State: learning that a benefit exists and understanding its requirements; fulfilling forms, deadlines and accreditations; and enduring uncertainty, stigma or loss of autonomy. It is a useful classification, although its elements overlap and are rarely measured from the experience of those who undergo the procedures.

In Spain, Francisco Ferraioli analysed 10,306 responses from a CIS survey in November 2023. Advanced age, low income and a lower level of education were associated with higher costs of learning, compliance and psychological strain in digital administration. The study refers to public services in general, not only social benefits, but it shows that the same procedure does not demand the same effort from all people.

The Spanish Ombudsman's actions on the Minimum Vital Income have documented difficulties with prior appointments, a lack of telephone support, the requirement for a digital certificate, communications that are difficult to understand and prolonged delays. These are individual cases, not an estimate of frequency. Their value lies in showing how several minor barriers can accumulate within a single case file.

Documentary reiteration belongs to the same problem. A person must once again accredit a condition already recognised, as still occurs in certain access points linked to disability. The obligations for easy-to-read formats and support for interacting with administrations aim to correct part of that inequality, as I explained in "Cognitive accessibility: what changes in Spain from 2 January 2027". The European Disability Card stems from a similar question: why a person must repeatedly demonstrate a situation that a public authority has already recognised.

None of this proves that procedures are designed to exclude. It does show that their costs fall unequally. When that distribution is predictable and the institution does not measure or correct it, the procedure stops being neutral and operates as a selection criterion. A right can fail even if each requirement, considered separately, has legal coverage. The same distance between norm and effect appears when analysing what eviction and occupation figures measure.

Having a right is not enough to receive it

The AIReF estimated that 55% of households potentially eligible for the Minimum Vital Income had not applied for it in 2024; in 2025 the rate fell to 52%. For those two years it calculated, respectively, 939,303 and 1,031,442 potential households, compared to 392,444 and 455,401 recipient households in December. In 2025, the processing time stood at 99 days, 104 fewer than in the previous measurement.

The figure for recipients and the estimate of non-take-up come from different measurements and are rounded. They do not allow one to deduce by difference how many households applied for the benefit, were denied or were still awaiting a resolution. The complete evolution of the IMV is developed in "Minimum Vital Income: when having a potential right is not enough to receive it". Here, another issue matters: how much of the access depends on the design of the procedure.

Non-take-up does not have a single cause. The first AIReF evaluation observed a lower probability of application among households with other income, especially employment-related. The third noted that five percentage points corresponded to households already receiving regional minimum income schemes and highlighted the importance of comprehensible information. A limited amount, uncertainty regarding the outcome, overlap with other forms of assistance and the costs of the procedure may act simultaneously.

Regional minimum income schemes present an even wider range. Diego Muñoz-Higueras, Amadeo Fuenmayor and Rafael Granell estimated, using 2019 data, non-take-up rates of between 55.64% and 94.52%, depending on the programme. The authors advise against comparing territories as if they were serving the same population and do not identify the determinants of these differences. The results do confirm that benefits with very different requirements, amounts and procedures coexisted.

The Acceso Vital project allows for a better isolation of part of the problem. In a trial with 400 census tracts, an in-person information and support campaign increased IMV applications by 19.5% after thirteen weeks, without increasing the proportion of inadmissible applications. The campaign developed solely on social media did not produce significant changes. The difference suggests that a lack of awareness does not by itself explain the failure to apply: informing and supporting are not equivalent.

What the Administration does with data

Digitalisation can reduce travel, extend opening hours and pre-fill information. It can also exclude those who lack access, skills, documentation or an in-person alternative. Eurofound has pointed to another asymmetry: administrations use data more proactively to recover undue payments than to identify eligible individuals who do not apply for a benefit.

Since November 2024, there has been a gateway in Spain for certain individuals who exhaust their unemployment benefit to access the IMV without submitting a new application or re-submitting documentation, provided they give their consent. It is not a general automatic concession, but it shifts part of the burden from the individual to the Administration.

Data can be used to detect unclaimed rights or to pursue non-compliance. The choice between both uses is not neutral. Nor is it sufficient to replace every personal relationship with an automated decision: those who do not appear correctly in the registers may be left even further behind. The alternative involves combining ex officio checks, pre-filled data, accessible channels and human support.

The management of the IMV has improved in terms of time and coverage, but it maintains a structural access problem. It is not uniformly poor management: it processes case files better than it ensures that the eligible population enters the procedure. This difference prevents its effectiveness from being measured solely by the number of resolutions or by the reduction in average time.

When poverty becomes a judgement

Administrative burden describes costs. Administrative exclusion appears when a requirement or a channel prevents the initiation or completion of the procedure. Institutional aporophobia requires something more: that poverty or associated circumstances intervene unfavourably when recognising a need, interpreting conduct or maintaining a response.

The available Spanish empirical evidence is sectoral. Eva María Picado Valverde, Amaia Yurrebaso Macho, Esther García-Valverde and Raquel Guzmán Ordaz analysed the responses of 297 professionals in resources for homeless women via a questionnaire. They identify paternalism and contempt as forms of institutional aporophobia and find differences according to the characteristics attributed to the users, the professional profile and the type of resource. Flexible and rights-oriented models, such as Housing First, were associated with more inclusive practices.

The study does not collect the experiences of the users, does not establish causality and does not allow for the explanation of IMV non-take-up, appointment scheduling or the digital divide through aporophobia. It does help to pinpoint the moment at which a material barrier becomes a judgement. Failing to attend an appointment may be due to a lack of transport, residential instability, violence or care responsibilities. Interpreting this automatically as a lack of interest or lack of cooperation transforms a difficulty associated with poverty into a reason to reduce the response.

From formal recognition to effective access

The Recommendation of the Council of the European Union of 30 January 2023 on adequate minimum income proposes reducing administrative burden, simplifying applications, offering free and accessible information, combating stigmatisation, reaching those who lack resources and periodically evaluating non-take-up. It also proposes individualised support and a single point of contact. It is a recommendation and, in accordance with Article 288 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, it is not binding.

Article 30 of the revised European Social Charter has a different nature. It obliges the States that have accepted it to adopt, within a global and coordinated approach, measures to promote effective access to employment, housing, training, education, culture and social and medical assistance for those who live or may come to live in poverty or exclusion. Spain ratified the revised Charter in its entirety in 2021 and it entered into force for Spain on 1 July of that year. The article does not by itself create a uniform benefit or determine a specific procedure, but it places effective access within the obligations assumed by the State.

Collective complaint 241/2024, presented by ATD Fourth World against Spain, questions various legal and application elements of the IMV. The European Committee of Social Rights declared it partially admissible on 15 May 2025 and, as of 26 October 2026, it remained registered as pending. The objections formulated by the complaining organisation are not yet conclusions of the Committee. STC 32/2024 resolved a conflict regarding the regional participation in the management of the IMV and did not establish a general right to access a benefit without administrative barriers.

Formal protection also depends on tasks of guidance, translation, documentation, support and coordination. When the institution does not provide them, they fall upon the individual, their environment, local professionals and social entities. Acceso Vital shows that support can change the probability of applying for a benefit. I have not located estimates of how much work these supports absorb or how much it would cost to integrate the connections that the system leaves out.

This last reading is a hypothesis, not a finding from the sources: a policy may appear to be executed because the work that makes it accessible does not appear in its indicators. This shift connects with "The work that sustains culture and is not recorded in any data". There are tasks that sustain the functioning of a system and which, nevertheless, are not always integrated, remunerated or measured.

What should be measured

Measuring resolved cases and average times is not enough to understand effective access. I propose five dimensions:

  • Coverage. Estimated non-take-up and evolution, with breakdowns compatible with data protection by age, income, household composition, disability, nationality and territory.
  • Abandonment and documentation. Applications archived, withdrawn or denied due to documentation not provided or not rectified, separated from denials due to material non-compliance.
  • Time. Median and percentiles of resolution, successive requirements and procedures terminated by silence.
  • Channel and support. In-person, telephone and digital channels actually available; pre-filled data; applications submitted with and without support, and differences in their outcomes.
  • Review and territory. Reimbursements, errors attributable to late information or to the Administration, and differences in time and outcome between territories for comparable profiles.

The European recommendation calls for the evaluation of non-take-up, but does not set these indicators. The proposal shifts the question from how many files the Administration processes to who manages to enter, remain and obtain a comprehensible response.

If an administration can calculate how much it overpaid, what would it know about those who do not manage to exercise a right if it also measured that absence?

About the open conversation

If you work in social services, benefits management, support entities or public evaluation, or have processed a benefit and wish to clarify any data, you may write to me. This article distinguishes between findings, interpretations and proposals and does not replace the advice applicable to a specific case.

Sources

Discover more from Juan A. Esteban

Subscribe to receive the latest posts by email.

Español English (UK)