The Government and ERC assume there will be no budgets for Sant Joan

BarcelonaAfter the clash over budgets that were not even negotiated, the PSC and ERC reset the clock. It was in mid-March when the two parties decided to give themselves a new opportunity and resume talks once Salvador Illa withdrew the bill and Esquerra stopped making IRPF collection a red line. Since before Easter, therefore, socialists and republicans have been negotiating away from the spotlight that captured them before the debate on the entirety of the accounts. Talks are weekly and are conducted with secrecy. The deadline is July, but the Government is in a hurry and the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, has stated that the executive's wish is to have them validated by Sant Joan. Is this feasible?

Initially, various sources involved in the negotiation see this objective as unrealistic, given how slowly the negotiation files are progressing. For the budgets to see the light of day on June 24, the Government would have to approve them in the executive council during the first fortnight of May, and with the current pace of negotiations, these same negotiating sources see it as difficult.

Both sides have maintained their two negotiating teams —on behalf of the Government, this delegation is led by the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, although the Minister of Economy has joined, and on behalf of ERC, it is led by the party's general director, Lluís Salvadó—, but they have also created several working groups to address the proposals they want reflected in the budgetary items. It is in these more specific groups where deputies and representatives from each side specializing in the topics to be discussed also participate.

Before the negotiation derailed, socialists and republicans had not entered into negotiating budgetary items; instead, talks had focused on unblocking the issue of transferring IRPF collection to the Generalitat, bringing other pending agreements into the equation, such as the investment consortium –it was not enough–. In fact, this consortium is to be processed in Congress in the coming weeks. The two parties agreed to negotiate the transfers in parallel to the budgets, trying to find a new breakthrough to be able to approve the accounts. It will not be the IRPF, admit all consulted sources, although ERC does not give up on it.

Pending agreements

If the IRPF is what marked the previous negotiation, now ERC has wanted to move it out of focus. Oriol Junqueras' party maintains that the transfer of this tax remains one of its demands, but has opened up to replacing it if the Government puts an alternative on the table. this alternative is being negotiated without much noise —neither Esquerra nor the Government speak of budgets in public—, as if the issue that almost derailed the legislature had moved to the background. Sources are confident that there will be some new agreement, although some warn that there is no material time for it to be a transfer of sovereignty of great depth.

In fact, all of this again depends on what the Spanish government is willing to cede. And the fact that Andalusian elections have been called for May 17 is another variable that Catalan negotiators assume could delay the calendar. From ERC headquarters, they recall that a good part of the investiture agreements depend on Madrid. The PSC, on the other hand, wanted this negotiation not to be linked again to the variable of the Spanish government and to be confined to what the Generalitat itself can offer.

What are the agreements that still remain to be fulfilled? The transfer of Rodalies must be completed; the new financing announced in January must also materialize; the new governance for El Prat airport, where the Generalitat is to have a role, must be implemented, and the forgiveness of part of the debt from the autonomous liquidity fund (FLA) must also still be paid. Neither socialists nor republicans, however, detail which of these issues they are negotiating or if there are new ones on the table.

In fact, the socialists want to focus on negotiating budgetary items and emphasize that the timelines for fulfilling the investiture agreements are different. This was stated this week by the Government spokesperson and Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque. "Does this mean we are not working on other issues? No," she assured. The spokesperson also pointed out that the investiture agreements have "different timelines" from those of the accounts. In other words, the executive does not want to be a slave to the timelines that other issues beyond the budgets may have, so that it does not happen to them as with the IRPF.

A consultation on support for Illa?

While awaiting how negotiations progress, Esquerra will have to explain to its bases the agreement it reaches with the PSC. The leadership of the Republicans moved to its national council the decision not to open negotiations on the budgets until there was a gesture regarding personal income tax. However, Republican cadres who refuse to negotiate with the PSC, such as the Colectivo Primero de Octubre —one of the minority critical currents within ERC—, have gone a step further and this Friday have formally registered the request to convene an internal consultation to submit to the bases' debate ERC's support for Salvador Illa's government.

"Militancy must be given a voice again," defended its spokesperson, Xavier Martínez, in statements to the media, where he also pointed out that the investiture agreements are not being met. Among the militants who have registered the petition, there are also members of Foc Nou, the candidacy headed by Helena Solà and Alfred Bosch in the primaries. Now the leadership must tell them the exact amount of guarantees they must present –the statutes establish that it must be requested by 10% of the militancy–. From then on, they will have 50 days to obtain them.