Illa's first budgets prepare for the first passage in Parliament

BarcelonaThe agreement that the Government presented two weeks ago with ERC and Comuns for the budgets will overcome the first hurdle in Parliament this Thursday. The plenary session of the Catalan chamber will hold the general debate on the accounts, where the amendments to the whole presented by all the opposition groups must be addressed: Junts, CUP, Aliança, PP, and Vox. The socialists, however, will assert the pact reached with the republicans and Jéssica Albiach's group to reject the four amendments and allow the accounts to start moving forward in Parliament. It is foreseen that, if no group takes the bill to the Council of Statutory Guarantees, the budgets will see the light of day in early July. In fact, the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, thanked at the beginning of her speech for the "demand" and also the "generosity" of ERC and Comuns.

"The country doesn't need blockages, but tools and the main tool is the budget. It allows us to move from uncertainty to stability," Romero defended. These will be Salvador Illa's first budgets as president. Accounts that come close to the midpoint of the legislature and could be the only ones the Government approves: next year there are municipal elections and, if they are not brought forward, also general elections, a scenario not conducive to negotiating budgets; and 2028 is already the last year of Salvador Illa's term. That's why the executive had set its sights on getting these budgets passed. It even had to swallow the bitter pill of withdrawing the first bill it presented in February after negotiations with ERC derailed due to the State's refusal to transfer IRPF revenue, the red line that the Republicans had set to start talking about the budgets.

The budgets approved by the executive council two weeks ago reach almost 50,000 million euros, specifically 49,162 million, 22% more than in 2023 —about 9,126 million euros—, the last ones approved by the Government of Pere Aragonès. Regarding the Generalitat's spending last year, under a budget extension, the increase is 10.3%. For the opposition, however, the budgets presented by the Government are not sufficient. For example, for Junts, the main opposition group, the accounts will not reverse the educational or health crisis, said the group's leader in Parliament, Mònica Sales, a few days ago, and she also criticized that ERC has "subordinated" itself to the socialists and that the budgets bear the stamp of the "extremism" of the Commons.

The financing model

Romero has taken advantage of the debate to pressure Junts and also the PP to agree to approve the new financing model that the socialists agreed with ERC. "Despite legitimate political differences, I hope they don't put spokes in the wheels," she stated. In fact, she asked not to "accuse" those who made the proposal and, in this regard, recalled that the two previous proposals before 2014 also came from Catalonia, both from CiU and from the tripartite government. The minister, in this regard, assured that with this new model, next year Catalonia would have almost 5,000 million euros to incorporate into the budget. "We need resources, help us to get this new financing model approved," she concluded.