The Government has not yet finished sinking into the path that the fiscal pact signed with the ERC will have, one of the great melons to open during the recently inaugurated political year. It is not known how the reform of the regional financing system with the rest of the territories will be addressed, nor how the “singular financing” is supposed to be applied, nor when. Although the executive of Pedro Sánchez is beginning to focus on the fact that this calendar does not depend exclusively on the will of Moncloa.
“We will adapt to the calendar as much as possible, but it does not depend only on the government. Also on the Generalitat, on its capacity and willingness to assume the tasks of the agreement itself,” said the First Vice-President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, on Tuesday after the Council of Ministers. Montero also announced that contacts had already been made between his department and the government of Salvador Illa to schedule a series of meetings that would address the issue of to what extent Catalonia already has the capacity to promote its own Treasury.
“We have scheduled meetings with the Generalitat to see its availability to assume the new tasks that correspond to it in accordance with the agreement,” said the vice president, who did not want to specify further on the path of the reform and asked for time and discretion. “Let’s work. We will be able to inform as we progress, but we need sufficient prudence,” he asked after emphasizing, once again, that the government does not consider any other scenario than to comply “in full” with what was signed with Esquerra.
Treasury will not convene Fiscal Policy Council
Asked about contact with the rest of the communities so that her department can provide the explanations that the majority of presidents are asking for on the implications of the agreement reached in Catalonia, Montero wondered whether the PP really wanted to address this debate and attacked Feijóo’s slogans to his barons. “I watched, perplexed, as Mr Feijóo instructed the regional presidents not to talk about debt cancellation or financing with the government. How can the president of the PP instruct people who have such important responsibilities not to go to meetings to talk about it?” “I would like to know what the reaction of the regional presidents will be,” he said.
The government explains that during the month of July, bilateral meetings were held between the Ministry of Finance and regional ministries to discuss debt cancellation. An intervention that, according to the department of María Jesús Montero, made the opposition leader explode.
“Then they complain about not having contact with the government or complain about other communities being received. But they always do the same thing: they don’t go to meetings, they lower taxes in their territories and ask for more money from the state,” Montero said.
Sources from the Ministry of Finance rule out, at least for now, the convening of a new meeting of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council, as requested by the popular parties to approach a multilateral negotiation. “If they are the ones who make the multilateral organizations ineffective. In July, they refrained from following the path of stability that we presented to them at the Fiscal Policy Council, and then they canceled it in Congress,” the same sources lament.
The vice president herself calculated the impact on the finances of the autonomous communities and municipalities of the Popular Party that would reverse a path of stability that the Council of Ministers approved again this Tuesday and that the Government will present again to Parliament at around 11.5 billion euros, where it was rejected in July with votes against from the PP, Vox and Junts, among others.
María Jesús Montero also warned the popular members that their vote against, beyond the damage caused to the public accounts of the autonomies and councils, will not make the government back down on the general state budgets.
“If the PP believes that reducing the deficit will lead to a fall in budgets, forget it. The Spanish government will present the 2025 budgets either in this way or in the previous one,” he promised. Although the Executive assumes the difficulty of establishing a parliamentary majority that supports these accounts, the Minister of Finance assured that he would favor negotiations with all political groups. Also with Junts and ERC, whose congresses will face the two pro-independence formations this fall. “If they do not move forward, those who constantly put China in the way so that the government cannot implement its political initiative will have to explain themselves,” he concluded.
At the PSOE Federal Committee last Saturday, Pedro Sánchez himself already warned that the scenario of early elections is not even a hypothesis, even if things are complicated for him in Congress. “With a constructive or restrictive legislative power, we will continue to govern for the people, for coexistence and progress,” he said in an attempt to offer some guarantee of continuity to the legislative power.
