The Government is considering giving in to the Junts’ request to raise the deficit ceiling that the Executive wants to set for the autonomous communities and local companies in 2025, in order to ensure the support of Carles Puigdemont’s party for next year’s budgets. Sources close to the negotiations reveal elEconomista.es which Moncloa has not yet specified How much more flexible would this make the accounting imbalance of 0.1% of GDP? which now corresponds to the regional governments, including the Generalitat. This is why the vote on the trajectory of budgetary stability scheduled for this Thursday has been delayed indefinitely.
However, according to these same sources, the Executive’s desire to find a point of agreement with Junts in this area would lead to the two parties meeting this week, perhaps precisely on Thursday. The truth is that both interlocutors have much to gain if there is an agreement. On the one hand, the coalition government would avoid a new defeat in the Congress of Deputies like the one suffered in July, when the same deficit and debt targets for all administrations that he intended to present in the next 48 hours failed in the Lower House. But above all, the government of Pedro Sánchez would avoid the failure that would entail a new extension, the second consecutive, of the State Budget for 2023. As for Junts, it would gain greatly from presenting itself as the main person responsible for this project. The Generalitat, the city councils and the municipal councils have a greater margin of spending next year. It is not for nothing that the party controlled by Puigdemont has been betting very big on this area for years.
Already in 2014, the Parliament of Catalonia, with the support of the PSC of the time, had approved a motion in which it urged the central government to cede to the autonomous communities of the common regime a third of the deficit authorized for the entire Spanish population. sector in each anus. This proportion, if translated into the figures that the Treasury manages for 2025, would imply that the red figures of the autonomous communities would rise to 0.8% of the GDP compared to the 0.1% recognized today.
More efforts for the State
Logically, the financial situation of the State would be significantly more uncomfortable if the Junts claim were to succeed. Today, the Central Administration is responsible for 35 billion, out of the total 40 billion deficit tolerated for the entire public sector for the year. The greater margin that would be granted to the autonomies and municipalities would force the State to tighten its belt even more, so as not to jeopardize compliance with the fiscal rules that the European Commission is once again demanding.
However, the upward correction of the economic growth data for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, undertaken by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), could end up becoming the best ally at the negotiating table. The 2.7% increase in GDP with which Spain closed last year, two tenths more than that initially recorded, gives the State a greater fiscal capacity than expected. Resources that Moncloa could dedicate to granting more flexible deficit targets to the autonomous communities, as demanded by Junts to allow Sánchez to draw up the 2025 budgets.
The stability path approved two weeks ago by the Council of Ministers already proposes more lax objectives for the regions. In this document, the State alone assumes all the fiscal adjustment necessary to comply with the proposed deficit reduction schedule, transferring an additional 6.6 billion over two years to the autonomous communities and 4.950 million to the municipalities. “This greater margin would be assumed by the Central Administration, which would be the one that would make the greatest effort to reduce the deficit, as has already happened in recent years,” the Ministry of Finance insisted yesterday in a statement. María Jesús Montero will seek a political agreement that traces a new path, which could double the budgetary margin – at least – for the autonomies.
The truth is that the withdrawal from the path of stability of the Congress and the opening of negotiations with Junts will prolong – even more – all the transit that the budget project still has to make. If the postconvergent If a larger fiscal margin for the LACC is achieved, the Council of Ministers will have to approve a new path with the amendments, and then find space for its debate in the plenary session of the Lower House. Then will come the turn of the presentation of the accounts, the vote on the amendments in their entirety and all the subsequent work of the parliamentary committees. Everything must be completed before the end of the year, to avoid the automatic extension of the 2023 Accounts.
