Pedro Sanchez once again demonstrated its ability to recalculate its route in record time depending on events. The President of the Government’s GPS is the fastest and most efficient, and while others rethink their strategies, he executes them and takes the political initiative to adapt to the curves.
He understood in a very short time that the legislature had taken an unexpected turn and that it was necessary to adapt tactics and strategy to this unexpected turn.
The weekend ended in general desolation and shock due to the disaster caused by DANA in Valencia, and with an impression of helplessness and abandonment of the State towards those affected. And this Tuesday, he had a royal decree approved by the Council of Ministers responsible for urgent measures to mitigate the consequences of the tragedy.
It is a kind of social shield intended to help those affected by urgent measures, but also accompanied by medium-term measures to help with reconstruction and other long-term proposals to prevent similar situations from occurring. reproduce. The Government speaks of “relaunch and transformation necessary to adapt the territory to the climate emergency”, as part of a “immediate intervention plan for the reconstruction and recovery of the Valencian Community“.
In this way, the president gives this plan short, medium and long term content and, in this way, links it to the budgets that could be approved for 2025, to subsequent state accounts and even to decisions that will last until least another legislature. more.
Now they will be the “Reconstruction budgets” or “the budgets to face the catastrophe”. As EL ESPAÑOL reports, these will no longer be the budgets to keep Pedro Sánchez at Moncloa.
Government sources explain that, to develop it, the reconstruction plan must necessarily be linked to the approval of general state budgets. If these were urgent and fundamental measures, the contingency fund – which is used precisely for unforeseen events like this – and the European funds established for disasters would be sufficient.
But Sánchez thus manages to arm himself with arguments to negotiate with the rest of the parliamentary groups the budgets for 2025, the approval of which was previously uncertain. So much so that the president has repeatedly assured that He was ready to extend those of 2023 and to maintain the legislature until the end. You may now be able to do this with approved accounts.
Tax flexibility
Government sources assure that with the accounts in force, approved in 2022, it would not be possible to approve such an ambitious plan. The PP, for its part, assures that Sánchez unnecessarily links aid to budgets and to stay in power.
Even before DANA, it was assured that The approval of the accounts for 2025 could already mean that Sánchez will reach at least until 2026.
Sánchez was able to recalculate the course and modify the negotiations already underway, first to approve the trajectory of the deficit, and then to realize the budgets at the beginning of the year.
The deficit trajectory was negotiated with Junts and, according to the government, it is now necessary to include the DANA aid factor to have more spending room. This negotiation was already advanced and Moncloa already assumes that it can be closed shortly, but including the new tax flexibility that Brussels could grant to Spain following the disaster.
The next, more uncertain step was that of the state budgets themselves. On the left, the Podemos bases approved during a consultation that budgets would not be supported if relations with Israel are not severed and if rents are limited to 40%. And with Junts, the question was whether to Carles Puigdemont He is interested in such an agreement which extends the legislature.
The Government understands that the scenario has changed and that the parliamentary groups must be aware of the need to approve the budgets to help the Valencian Community, which will facilitate their approval and, therefore, they will be able to waive their demands for ceilings in the negotiation.
This could even facilitate an agreement in the ongoing process in Congress on tax reform, in which the government must make compatible the positions of the right that supports it (PNV and Junts) and the left (Bildu, Sumar, Podemos and ERC ). .
The PP has already announced that it will not support the budgets because it understands that they are not necessary to approve aid to the Valencian Community, but Moncloa considers that their rejection has a political cost for Alberto Nuñez Feijóoat least in this territory.
The government attributes this rejection to the PP’s nervousness about the possibility of an extension of the legislature.
