Sánchez will receive a new parliamentary setback before the summer holidays

MadridOn the third anniversary of the July 23 elections and on the eve of the summer recess, Pedro Sánchez will suffer a new parliamentary defeat. The main event of this Thursday's extraordinary plenary session is the government's second and final attempt to approve the stability pathway (deficit and debt targets), which is the first required step to bring the General State Budgets to Congress in the autumn. As happened last week, the votes against from PP, Vox and Junts will make it fail. In an interview on TVE prior to the debate, the Junts spokesperson in the lower house, Míriam Nogueras, reiterated that the stability path is "a mockery" for Catalonia because it implies that "of every 100 euros that Europe allows, only one will go to Catalonia". Nogueras also blamed the low budgetary execution in the territory and has insisted on demanding that Sánchez step aside and "put someone" in place who will comply with the agreements with Junts.

The PSOE is downplaying this new setback and maintains its intention to present the public accounts even if they have to use the stability route of the last budgets in force, those of 2023. The socialist spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, has claimed that the legislature still makes sense and has defended that in the last three years 74 laws have been approved in Congress and "there are more than 40 that are currently being processed". The lower house will indeed approve other items on the agenda, such as the reform of the Congress's regulations which aims to facilitate minority parties having their own parliamentary group. It is a modification promoted by the parties of the plurinational majority, which lowers the requirements to establish it. From 5 to 3% the percentage of votes at the state level and from 15 to 10% in the provinces.

This plenary session, the last planned before the August holidays, comes the day after Alberto Núñez Feijóo proclaimed that the legislature is over in his assessment of the political year. The PP leader hoped to deliver new parliamentary setbacks to Sánchez to wear him down even further while awaiting the Spanish elections. To achieve this, Feijóo said he was counting on Vox and Junts, with whom he will align again this Thursday in the vote on the stability path.