Since Tuesday, October 1, the government of Pedro Sánchez has not respected the Constitution by not presenting the Draft General Budget of the State in the Cortes within the time limit mandatorily provided for in Article 134.
“The government must present the general state budgets to the Congress of Deputies at least three months before of the expiration of those of the previous year”, assures this precept.
Furthermore, not only will the delay be several weeks, but Moncloa does not plan to present the accounts to the Parliament before the end of November. He will do it due to the difficulties in obtaining parliamentary support and it will be during the passage of the congresses of Junts and ERC, two of the parties whose votes he needs to advance them, as Sánchez himself explained .
In this way, it will be impossible for the accounts to be approved and in force on January 1st. Government sources admit that it is not possible for budgets to be approved in just one month between Congress and the Senatetaking into account that in addition, the PP has a majority in the Upper House to veto it and that it will be necessary that MPs then lift the veto in a final vote.
They cannot be definitively approved by Parliament until at least a good part of January. This is why the Government no longer repeats that the Budgets will be approved”in due time”.
In other words, it is already certain that the Government will have to extend the current budgets, which are those of 2023. This will be the case if it does not obtain parliamentary support and loses the vote in Congress, since Sánchez and Maria Jesus Montero They repeatedly assured that they would present them, even if they did not have guaranteed support and were rejected.
And they will also be extended even if there is an agreement, since the deadlines do not allow its approval before January 1. That article 134 of the Constitution also specifies that “if the finance law is not approved before the first day of the corresponding financial year, will be considered automatically extended the budgets of the previous year until the approval of the new ones.
Already in March, the government extended the 2023 budgets because it assured that the call for elections In Catalonia meant that there was no “climate” to agree on these issues and move them forward. This attempt also took place outside the constitutional deadline, but the government then had a completely acceptable excuse, because the inauguration took place only on November 16, without having time to prepare a budget project.
The timetable managed by the Government provides for the maintenance of negotiations on the deficit path, the first step for the Budgetsover the next few weeks. Contacts with Junts have already started and if there is an agreement, it will have to be ratified in the Tax and Financial Policy Councilapprove it in the Council of Ministers and deal with them in Congress, which will only be possible at the end of October, at best.
If there is an agreement, then a new negotiation on the Budgets will be necessary, also very complicated. If there is none, the Government will have to present the project Budgets with the previous deficit trajectory, the same with which the accounts were prepared in 2023.
Transfers to Junts
These days the Government will intensify the dynamics of the commitments made with Junts and awaiting completion. For example, seeks a way to promote the transfer of immigration skills to the Generalitatas agreed with Carles Puigdemont in January in exchange for his vote on a decree validated in Congress.
The main obstacle to agreements with Together is that of the application of the amnesty law by the courts, added to the judicial missteps of Puigdemont like that of Court of Justice of the European Union on his seat in the European Parliament.
This Monday, moreover, the Supreme Court decided to ratify that it will not apply amnesty to the rest of the separatists found guilty of embezzlement. It will have to be the Constitutional Court the one who decides and corrects this decision, but in a difficult period for Puigdemont and which could last until spring 2025, at least.
This is also one of the criticisms addressed by Puigdemont to the government during the meeting, ten days ago, outside Spain, with the delegation he led. Santos Cerdan.
Moncloa sources do not hide their discomfort with the decision of the Supremebecause they understand that this goes against the will of legislators and because in their opinion the notion of embezzlement that the magistrates applied is not acceptable. In other words, the Government finds itself with the argument of the dissenting vote signed by the magistrate Ana Ferrer who defends the application of the law in these cases.
These sources consider that there is a clear and express desire of the Supreme Court not to apply the amnesty law and hinder the political strategy for Catalonia and this will be publicly denounced by the government.
Something similar is happening with the delay in the decision of the Provincial Court of Madrid on the archiving of judicial information against Begoña Gomez, wife of the president of the government.
“A hypothesis: a provincial court asks an investigating court to send it the entire file to decide. The court does not send everything and, precisely, it does not send or mention a very important document to be resolved. White and in a bottle”, the minister wrote Oscar Lopez In Jose Luis Peinado.
Moncloa hoped that the Court would settle the matter with the archiveto prevent Sánchez’s attrition from continuing, but this alleged bureaucratic error lengthens the deadlines and prolongs the uncertainty on the file.
Sánchez has long decided not to avoid confrontation with Judge Peinado and the government does so in the declarations of ministers and with the complaints against the instructor for prevarication and revelation of secrets.
