Andalusia, the Canary Islands and Galicia are called upon to reduce their public spending up to 6.1 billion per year in the event that the Catalan tax agreement comes into force. These three autonomies are the territories most affected by the application of the so-called law principle of ordinality that Catalonia wants it to set the tone in the financing system of the common regime. However, this principle leads to adjustments of this type in all the communities, more or less important, with the exception of Catalonia itself, Madrid and the Balearic Islands.
To understand the scope of this distribution criterion, it must be remembered that the investiture agreement between the PSC and the ERC does not only propose the transfer to the Catalan Tax Agency of the collection and management of 100% of the taxes generated in this autonomy. Once this transfer has been made, the Generalitat demands that its contribution to the State as a whole, plus a share of solidarity with the rest of the autonomies, is always calculated in accordance with the principle of ordinality.
This scale requires that there be complete coherence between the tax revenues of each territorythat determine what it can contribute to the financing system and the resources it receives from the State. Translated into the most common language of Catalan nationalism, it is not tolerable that, if the autonomies are ranked from highest to lowest according to their income, Catalonia occupies second place after Madrid but, at the same time, is at the bottom of the ranking. according to the amount it receives annually in State funding.
Currently, there is no trace of ordinary in the functioning of the financing system. Above all, as demonstrated by the most recent data from Fedea, the most frequent imbalance lies in the fact that a large number of autonomies receive a volume of effective financing from the State that far exceeds the amount collected in taxes in that territory.
The biggest differences
The difference is seen above all in the calculations per capita, but also in absolute terms. In the case of Andalusia, the difference, in favour of state financing, is 6.1 billion. That of the Canary Islands itself exceeds 4.1 billion and, in the case of Galicia, it is 2.987 million, followed by Castilla y León with 2.370 million.
Correcting this situation, as required by the principle of ordinality, leaves only two options open: either the regional governments of these territories are forced to increase taxes, or it is It is the State that takes the initiative and reduces the settlements that it disseminates in each of these territories. In this case, the regional executives will see their resources greatly reduced and will have to reduce their expenditure to the level that their own income allows them, helped, although to a limited extent, by the supplement from the solidarity mechanisms. The impact on the public services that they offer to their citizens would be of great magnitude.
The criterion of ordinality therefore gives rise to a very thorny debate, so it is not surprising that it has never been reflected, in black and white, in the Organic Law on Autonomous Financing. This is not the case for the mechanisms for distributing resources between regions applied by Germany or Canada, whose Constitutions provide for provisions guaranteeing that a State of the Federation or a Land provides resources to its counterparts beyond a certain level.
Why the ordinary is broken
It is true, however, that, especially in the German case, nuances can be established since there are parallel protocols that allow the Eastern states, still heavily burdened by the economic legacy from before reunification, to receive additional aid from rich territories such as Hesse or Bavaria.
If, however, in the Spanish case, ordinanality is transgressed as it does not happen in almost any other tax system, this is due, according to the experts consulted, to the desire of the legislator that the imbalances be temporary and corrected over time. In other words, it was hoped that the additional resources received, for decades, by the poorest autonomous communities would serve to compensate, over time, the differences with respect to those at the forefront. This is the same logic that applies, at Community level, with the cohesion funds and the southern and northern countries of the European Union. However, in the case of the autonomous communities, in many cases this situation has not occurred and the differences persist that explain why the principle of ordinanality is not applied.
The debate between the autonomies remains open and this will be demonstrated at the conclave of regional leaders of the PP that will take place this Friday. Other equally controversial aspects of the agreement between PSC and Esquerra will be on the table, such as the cost of the Catalan tax agreement and how it will be financed. Fedea also has calculations on this subject and estimates that the collection of personal income tax at the state level should increase by almost 30%.
