The president of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, will have carte blanche to demand Pedro Sánchez a compensation fund this mitigates the reduction in resources due to relative population loss. All parties, except Vox, supported the initiative this Thursday in the Aragonese Parliament, which received several amendments from the PSOE that were accepted by the Parliament. popular.
Last month, the PP openly linked the viability of next year’s budgets in Aragon to the ability of the autonomous community to recover the 87 million euros and this year, if no remedy is provided, it will not benefit. For what reason? As a result of the depopulation process suffered by the community, despite above-average growth.
Meanwhile, those of Vox have justified their position of not supporting the defense of this compensation fund by not favoring the privileges of the autonomous communities, in their ideological defense of eliminate the autonomous system.
For those at Vox, this compensation fund is “a patch” for a “failed autonomous system”. Furthermore, they consider that the accepted proposals of the PSOE mean “not lowering taxes”: “This proposal is a toast to the sun“.
The compensation fund
In this sense, the PP denounces that the problem of depopulation is neglected by the national government and that it also weighs on Aragon, which will receive 87 million less. In this way, the community will move from 5.158 million has 5.07 billion of financing, knowing that Aragon closed the year with growth above the Spanish average, reaching 2.7%.
“This autonomous community contributes more money to the common treasury than the others and despite this we are still penalized,” said the MP. popular Maria Navarrowho was responsible for defending the proposal aimed at requiring a specific transitional fund to compensate for the lack of resources in the Compensation Fund following the relative loss of population, by requesting its treatment before the plenary session of the Chamber.
In fact, it should be noted that Chunta Aragonesistthrough its integrated national deputy in Sumar, presented a proposal precisely to recover this loss of funding for Aragon. “Ms. Navarro, we are part of the same team, that of Aragon, and there we will work together,” he added. Pepe Soro (CHUNTA).
Navarro stressed that this initiative represents “a clear defense of Aragon and the Aragonese and is an act of justice because it means demanding that our Autonomous Community be treated as it deserves.” The deputy popular considered it serious that “it is no longer that the Government does not recognize us depopulation“It’s just that now it’s penalizing us.”
Budgets in Aragon
The approved initiative indicates the need to include this transitional fund in the general state budgets of 2025 “and in the next budget laws because it’s not about one year, it’s about Aragon always getting what he deserves.
The approved proposal also emphasizes the need to maintain this compensation fund in force as long as it is not undertaken, within the framework of the Tax and Financial Policy Councila reform of the autonomous financing model that envisages a greater weight in the calculation of the adjusted population of the variables included in the Statute of Autonomy of Aragon and ratified in the Declarations of Santiago and Zaragoza.
Azcón: end of inequalities
In this sense, the president of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, wants to put an end to the inequality that the less populated regions of Spain suffer, causing them to lose state funding due to a smaller population thanks to the compensation fund.
Azcón and the rest of popular calls for changing the current rules of the game, like his Valencian counterpart, Carlos Mazón, who proposed a fund transient leveling to compensate for the underfinancing of certain regions, such as Valencia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile and La Mancha or Aragon.
So much so that the leader of the Aragonese executive subordinates some new budgets in Aragon to the concession of Pedro Sánchez to a fund for leveling regional financing in Aragon. “Efforts are focused so that this injustice is resolved in the General State Budgets and, when we have resolved this injustice, we will enter into the debate and approval of the Aragon 2025 budgets,” he said. declared recently.
A situation apparently difficult to resolve, given the fact that the negotiation of the General budgets They are hanging by a thread between Sánchez and his partners and we could face another extension.
In fact, this assertion by Azcón is supported by academics from the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea) and the General Council of Economists (CGE) who last September described the regional financing system as “unequal and capricious”.
These two entities proposed to create this temporary leveling fund that would supplement the income of the autonomous communities which, because they are below average in terms of adjusted per capita funding, receive less income. In other words, the regions affected, among other parameters, by aging populationwhich have fewer children of school age or whose population is dispersed.
In other words, a fund temporary and transient while the reform of the regional financing system is underway or there is an agreement between political parties for distribution.
