The Council of Ministers will approve tomorrow the same spending ceiling – which it failed to meet last July – with the intention of having it voted on next week in the Congress of Deputies. The Government is thus reactivating the calendar for the 2025 budget, which it plans to present to the Lower House in early October. The bases will be the same. The ceiling for non-financial expenditure will reach 199.171 million eurosand the stability trajectory will bring the deficit to 2.5% in 2025, to 2.1% a year later and to 1.8% in 2027. Over the next three years, the CCAA could experience a negative balance of 0.1%, and the municipal councils in a balanced budget.
This will be the second and final attempt. If the first vice-president, María Jesús Montero, fails to maintain the spending ceiling and re-establish bridges with Junts, the Executive will be forced – for the second time in its first year of legislature – to extend the 2023 accounts, confirming a parliamentary instability that would be unable to promote other key initiativeswhich respond – among other things – to the tax agreement reached with the CER for Catalonia, or to the revision of the regional financing model. Other measures will also remain in limbo, such as the increase in tax pressure on the highest classes, announced last Wednesday by the President of the Government, or the reduction of the working day desired by the second vice-president, Yolanda Díaz.
Everything remains in the hands of Junts, who, since July 23, has not stopped showing signs of leaving the investiture bloc. “We we are not part of any bloc“, warned last week the general secretary of the formation, Jordi Turull, in statements to TV3The independentists place the “Brussels agreement” as the main red line to facilitate the processing of the budget project.
The Brussels Agreement
The pact required the approval of the amnesty law and its guarantee of application. A rule that the Executive managed to promote on May 30. But the independentists denounce that the text is not being applied in its entirety. Turull demanded – a few days ago – that Sánchez force the Attorney General of the State to present a complaint against judges who “do not apply” the text. The pact also provides for the transfer of 100% of taxes paid in Catalonia to the Generalitat, an article that would be resolved with the tax pact that the PSC signed with ERC to facilitate the investiture of Illa, and that the vice president defended before the Senate last time. Thursday. It should be noted that what was signed between Sánchez and Puigdemont did not contemplate the exit of Catalonia from the common regime, as they are now demanding, but a reform of the LOFCA which establishes “an exception clause for Catalonia that recognizes the singularity in which the institutional system of the Generalitat is organized.”
One of the few remaining accounts of the deal mentions the return of businessmen who left Catalonia during the process. Junts proposed that the plan be articulated through sanctions for companies that refuse to return; a path that the government excludes. To all this, the formation adds new conditions in recent weeks. They demand an increase in state investment in the Cercanía railway network in Catalonia, as well as Montero’s commitment to increase budget execution in the region.In 2023, only 45% of what was budgeted was paid in Catalonia. In Madrid, 212%“, denounced the spokesperson of the parliamentary group in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, in statements to Radio Catalonia.
On a more political level, relations between Moncloa and Junts are not going through their best moment. The pro-independence senator Eduard Pujol warned the Minister of Finance on Thursday that either they would approve an economic agreement for Catalonia or “game over“. Montero’s response was immediate. “The agreement does not meet his maximum aspirations, nor those of ERC; but why demonize the agreement? Why did another group sign it?” he replied.
