Government and ERC resume contacts after clash over budgets

BarcelonaThe Government and ERC have met three times in the last few hours after the clash over the budgets. The last meeting took place this Thursday morning, according to various sources familiar with the matter, and the two teams have scheduled further meetings once the Government presents the budget bill this Friday. This morning's meeting is not the first since the Republicans announced their "no" on negotiating the accounts. This Wednesday afternoon, as announced by the Efe agency and confirmed by ARA, they also met in Parliament. But it is that this Wednesday morning the two parties had already seen each other again, according to sources consulted by this newspaper. All this, to try to redirect a situation that, if the two parties do not find a solution, could end with the failure of Salvador Illa's first budgets.

The Government delegation negotiating with ERC is led by the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, and also includes the Secretary of the Government, Javier Villamayor; the first deputy secretary and spokesperson for the PSC, Lluïsa Moret, and the president of the PSC group, Ferran Pedret. The negotiating team of the Republicans is led by the party's general director, Lluís Salvadó, and alongside him are also the group's spokesperson in Parliament, Ester Capella; the deputy spokesperson, Jordi Albert; the deputy general secretary, Oriol López, and the deputy secretary of Communication, Isaac Albert. These are the teams that have been negotiating over the last few months, although the meetings have been complemented by the encounters that the Republicans have also had with representatives of the Spanish government, in which the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, and also the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, have participated (not in all meetings).

Esquerra maintains that without a gesture from the Spanish government guaranteeing them room to maneuver on the IRPF issue, they will not sit down to negotiate the budgets. However, the vice-president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, maintains her "no" to cede the competence so that Catalonia collects 100% of the income tax, as established in the investiture agreement of Salvador Illa signed by ERC and the PSC, and which the PSOE federal committee assumed. Montero is now sticking to what the State and the Generalitat signed in the Bilateral Commission in July last year on this matter: it was established that the two executives would promote "the relevant legislative changes" so that the Catalan Tax Agency (ATC) would assume "progressively management responsibilities in the IRPF" within "a network model for managing the tax system," in which the state treasury would also participate.

In other words, the objective of Catalonia collecting all the IRPF was dropped and it was transformed into shared management with the State. The Republicans did not like how the agreement between the two governments was written, but now they cling to the fact that it speaks of carrying out legislative changes so that the ATC assumes more competences gradually, and this, they recall, requires modifying the LOFCA (Organic Law on Financing of Autonomous Communities). A law that Montero does not want to change to incorporate what ERC demands and, in fact, focuses on emphasizing that what the Spanish government agreed with the Catalan executive is a "networked" management between the State and the autonomous communities that wish to do so.

A new Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy

In this regard, the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, stated this Thursday, in statements to Catalunya Ràdio, that the Government is working to agree on the legal modifications that comply with what was signed in the Bilateral Commission. Thus, she affirmed that the executive is "looking at what guarantees" Oriol Junqueras's party needs to sit down to talk about budgets. Be that as it may, for now the executive will present the budgets this Friday and will initiate the parliamentary processing without the support of ERC.

The Republicans maintain that they will present a full amendment for the debate initially scheduled for the week of March 9, but finally the deadline for submitting amendments will be extended to 20 days and, therefore, the plenary session would be the week of March 18 —a deadline that the board and the spokespersons' meeting will have to approve this Friday—, as several media outlets have reported. In this way, the negotiators gain time to continue negotiating. Before this date, furthermore, another Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy (CPFF) is scheduled to be held, in which Montero would have to present the necessary legislative modifications to materialize the new financing model. It is in this meeting where ERC will once again gauge the Spanish government's willingness to make a move on the IRPF.