The Spanish government on Tuesday withdrew the draft budget for 2025 due to be voted on in parliament on Thursday, after the right-wing Partido Popular Party and the party of Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont announced they would reject the text.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party (PSOE/S&D) and its progressive ally Sumar made the move in the face of the rejection of the text announced by the Partido Popular (PP/EPP) and Sánchez’s ad hoc parliamentary partner, Together for Catalonia (JxCat), led by Puigdemont.
“We are going to do everything in our power to continue working, talking and reaching an agreement”, said government spokesperson Pilar Alegría (PSOE).
The parliament was scheduled to vote on the so-called ‘stability path’ on Thursday, an essential step in drawing up next year’s national accounts and a ‘compass’ for the 2025-2027 financial framework when the current legislature ends.
However, everything pointed to a new rejection of the document as it occurred in the previous vote in July, when the PP, JxCat and the far-right VOX party, the third force in parliament, overturned the draft in the same version that was to be voted on Thursday.
However, as VOX spoke of new separatist ‘blackmail’ on Tuesday, JXCat’s spokeswoman in parliament, Miriam Nogueras, urged the government to present a draft budget that is ‘better for Catalonia’ if it wants the separatist party’s votes.
“We will not give support in exchange for nothing”, Nogueras stressed.
The executive’s decision on Tuesday is a further blow to the government, which has not set a new date for resubmitting the draft.
The ‘stability path’ includes deficit, debt and spending targets for all administrations and thus forms the basis on which all budgets for the following year are built, Euractiv´s partner EFE reported.
Despite the blow, and even if the government did not manage to approve the document, it would still be able to draw up and present the budget, although it would have to adapt it to the latest stability targets submitted to the European Commission, which were sent to Brussels in April last year.
The economic targets proposed by the government in July—and withdrawn on Tuesday—would see the country’s public deficit fall to 2.5% of GDP in 2025, two-tenths of a percentage point lower than the targets sent to Brussels in April (2.7%). If the new “spending path” is not approved, it would come into force.
The implementation of one or the other ‘spending path’ particularly affects the 17 autonomous communities and local councils, which, with the new targets, could register a one-tenth of a percentage point deficit and achieve a balanced budget, as opposed to the one-tenth of a percentage point surplus required by the government’s stability plan targets, EFE reported.
On Monday, Digital Transformation Minister Oscar López (PSOE) warned of serious consequences if the new budgets were not approved, estimating that regions and local councils would lose €12 billion.
The amnesty law and the undesired ‘boomerang’ effect on Sánchez
Beyond the purely technical issues, JxCat’s announced rejection would have very serious implications for the government, according to several analysts quoted by RNE on Tuesday.
The withdrawal of the document highlights the parliamentary fragility of Sánchez’s government, whose precarious stability depends on the support of the seven MPs from Puigdemont’s party and the other seven from its left-wing separatist rival, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC).
Without the votes of JxCat, ERC and the two pro-independence Basque formations, the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the far-left separatist EH-Bildu, as well as other smaller parties, the Spanish prime minister’s executive would fall.
According to analysts quoted by RNE, the rapid deterioration in relations between Sánchez’s PSOE and Puigdemont is mainly based on the legal hurdles encountered in the full implementation of a controversial amnesty law that would allow the separatist leader to return to Spain as a free man.
Despite his fleeting and controversial visit to Barcelona on 8 August, Puigdemont currently remains in self-exile in Waterloo, near Brussels, waiting for the investigating judge to lift the national arrest warrant against him for the crime of embezzlement related to the illegal pro-independence referendum of 1 October 2017.
Since the PSOE and JxCat signed an agreement in November 2023 to ensure Sánchez’s inauguration (and theoretically to support him throughout his term), the crisis of confidence between the two parties has worsened.
This was demonstrated by the meeting the two parties held in Geneva on Saturday, the second in as many months, to iron out their differences.
Meanwhile, the leader of the PP and head of the opposition in parliament, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, commented with irony on the outcome of the meeting on Tuesday.
“It seems that the meetings in Switzerland (between the PSOE and JxCat) have gone badly”, he said, referring to JxCat’s rejection of the draft budget.
In this regard, Núñez Feijóo recalled that Sánchez admitted in 2018 that a government without a budget does not have a full margin of manoeuvre.
“A government without a budget is as useful as a car without petrol,” Sánchez said in return.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)
Source: euractiv.com
