Pere Aragonès, President of the Generalitat, closed the political course by expressing his willingness to negotiate the 2023 budgets with either the CUP or En Comú Podem, since they are two forces, he said, in favor of the right to decide and the referendum. The panorama quickly cleared: the anti-capitalists have already distanced themselves from the President’s plea if they do not give their policies a Copernican twist, and everything indicates that for the third time the government will be forced to confront the commons . After agreeing on the bills for 2022, the Left Party wants to influence the major items and the strategic lines of the budget this time and not limit itself to “improving them”, against the clock, as they say, happened last year.
The left formation submitted its decision to the executive branch last week and is awaiting their response. “Although they mark the main lines, we want to enter the initial debate and not when everything is already decided,” says En Comú Podem deputy Joan Carles Gallego. “The thing about being able to enter the budget kitchen is a metaphor, but we don’t just want to make accents,” he affirms. “If you can get in from the start, it’s easier to see how global resources are distributed between departments.” The Commons set three conditions for negotiations to start as early as mid-July: that the degree of compliance with the agreed accounts for 2022 is satisfactory; intervene in strategy and not be a last crutch and that these are expansive accounts.
Members of the Government and House of Commons will hold the third meeting in September to review budget implementation. And it will be known there whether the executive accepts his approach. It doesn’t seem that after the deactivation of the CUP and his refusal to resort to the PSC, Aragonès has many more alternatives, although he persistently offers himself. For now, the Commons note that adherence to the 2022 financial statements is more uneven in some departments than others, but are generally inclined if there is a quarter to go before year-end, for a positive view. Gallego claims that progress on mobility (remembering the light rail in Camp de Tarragona) or on tax policy has met deadlines: they want the tax on large ships to come into force in 2023 and be ready by the end of the year that Project taxing polluting economic activities as well as remembering the tax on ultra-processed foods. Not so, for example, in health where they are far from compliant on oral health. The impact of the agreement on the accounts exceeded 500 million euros.
Joan Carles Gallego, in a file image. / EUROPA PRESS Illustrated Service (Automatic) (Europa Press)
The advisor Jaume Giró already made a first round of contacts with all the groups except Vox in July. The government will be able to play with a deficit margin of 0.3% in 2023, below the 0.6% tolerated a year ago and above the 0.1% the government initially considered. Catalonia would receive 3,000 million more thanks to the increase in funding that the autonomous communities will receive in 2023, announced in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF). That play, along with the increase in the deficit, will allow the government to boost social policies, according to the Commons. “We don’t want them to serve to reduce debt,” he says.
The point is that Jéssica Albiach’s party does not want to repeat scenes like last year when they reached a border agreement to withdraw the change entirely. It was just when ERC announced its abstention on the Barcelona City Council budgets. The big question is that 2023 is a pre-election year and trading card swaps wouldn’t be necessary. In other words, Ada Colau could go for the budget extension technical resource. Gallego acknowledges this possibility, but stresses that the government, the Generalitat and the City Council all need budgets in the face of skyrocketing inflation and the severe climate and energy crises. “The context calls for strategic politics to: Lay the foundations for the economic model. It would be a good service if the three budgets were aligned,” he concedes.
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The CUP has fundamentally distanced itself from all negotiations and denies being the government’s primary partner, recalling that this role is played by the Commons such as the PSC, with which it has partnered to defend major projects such as the Winter Games or partly in the expansion of the airport. The Investiture Agreement currently seems like a dead letter. MEP Eulàlia Reguant, in an interview with EFE, urged the government that in order to negotiate it had to park the Foment agenda, that it had to “abandon macro projects that go nowhere” and “reproduce the socially convergent policies of the last forty years “. “, that it decides on evictions or opposes the “Reunion Agenda”.
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