La Moncloa hopes to be able to announce in the coming weeks the agreement with Junts for a new deficit trajectory, and that in this way it can be approved in Congress and begin the process to try to move forward with the General state budgets by 2025.
Government sources explain that they are already negotiating with the party of Carles Puigdemont for weeks, once Pedro Sanchez agreed to withdraw the previous proposal which was going to be rejected by Congress for lack of support.
This negotiation is taking place in parallel with other negotiations between the government and the Junts to implement some of the agreements of Sánchez’s inauguration pact and other subsequent ones that had not yet been implemented.
La Moncloa accepted that no agreement would be announced before the congress of the Junts, which took place last weekend. During this congress, Puigdemont was elected president of the party without any contest. Moncloa therefore understands that it is time to speed up the negotiation and present the agreement.
Today, Moncloa wants to advance the negotiations to be able to move the legislature forward and, in the short term, to be able to escape the spiral caused by scandals Jose Luis Abalos and about Iñigo Errejón. The objective is to give an image of parliamentary support and a certain stability.
The government appreciates that Junts continued to sit at the table during this period, that he agreed to meet outside of Spain with Santos Cerdan And José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero without breaking the relationship, negotiate with Maria Jesus Montero the path to the deficit and measures such as the transfer of competence in matters of immigration and, above all, that the congress of the independence party rejected a proposal for a break with Sánchez.
The government would have wanted the minority current to advance to the Congress of Junts, which wanted to recover as a reference what Convergencia was in its time, and to maintain dialogue and agreements with Sánchez.
In fact, the Executive put pressure on the Catalan economic sectors to achieve this, but in the end there was no opposition to Puigdemont and the former president of the Generalitat had carte blanche to negotiate.
The sum of Junts and Podemos
An agreement on the deficit trajectory does not guarantee a subsequent agreement on the budgets and, in fact, Junts wanted to separate the two negotiations. However, the government believes that this first agreement would imply an agreement on the accounts and that it would make no sense for Junts to accept the first and not the second.
To approve these budgets, the government would have to overcome the big hurdle of putting the requests from Junts and Podemos. For this reason, in Moncloa, there is unease with those of Ione Belarra for having submitted its maximum program for this negotiation for consultation with activists.
Podemos activists ratified this Monday the two conditions that the PSOE considers impossible and which do not correspond to Junts’ political positions: the severance of diplomatic relations with Israel and the 40% reduction in rents.
With the PNV, negotiations on budgets are progressing adequately, with government gestures such as the convening of a meeting of the commission between the State and the Basque Country at which the President of the Government will be present.
With ERC, the conversations focus on the progress of the so-called Catalan concert agreed with the PSC for the investiture of Salvador Illa. This party will hold its congress in November, but the government understands that neither of the two candidates with the most options will change their position regarding the agreements with the Sánchez government.
The Government’s objective is to be able to approve the budgets in the Cortes at the beginning of 2025.
