The People's Party (PP) will take Pedro Sánchez to the Constitutional Court to avoid presenting a budget.

MadridPedro Sánchez reiterated this Tuesday that he will present a draft budget for 2026 before the end of the year. However, the Spanish Prime Minister, aware of his precarious parliamentary majority, also stated in the interview he gave to Cadena SER that he will continue governing even if he fails to approve it. This intention by the Socialist leader to see out the legislature until 2027, even with the 2023 budget extended, outrages the PP, which sees it as a demonstration of Sánchez's "undemocratic" nature and evidence that the legislature "was already stillborn." In response to this, the Popular Party announced this Friday that next week they will take the first step toward taking the Spanish government to the Constitutional Court for not yet presenting a budget.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party will do so through the Senate, where they have an absolute majority. According to Alicia García, the spokesperson in the upper house, next Wednesday's plenary session will debate and approve a conflict of powers directed at Sánchez's administration. If, once approved, the Moncloa responds negatively to the request to present public accounts or does not respond at all, the matter will be referred to the Constitutional Court, which must decide who is right. The PP justifies taking the matter to the Constitutional Court by considering that not presenting budgets violates a "constitutional obligation." "They are not optional," García argued in statements released by the party.

The Spanish government has scorned the popular initiative. The First Vice President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, insisted on paying attention to the media for presenting a budget "with historic allocations" and accused the PP of "manipulating" the Senate for "partisan interests." The Minister of the Presidency, Justice, and Parliamentary Relations, Félix Bolaños, has predicted that "it will end in nothing." "I imagine the result will be like all the previous ones," he said in statements to the lower house this Friday. This is not the first time the PP has used this constitutional instrument. One of the most notorious instances was when the Senate approved one against Congress over the amnesty law, but declined to take the next step of ultimately submitting it to the Constitutional Court. Bolaños questioned the PP's interpretation of the law, which he sees as far removed from the doctrine applied by the Constitutional Court.

The popular argument

In the document filed by the People's Party (PP) in the Senate proposing that the upper house submit the dispute, they argue that Article 134.1 of the Constitution states that "it is the government's responsibility to prepare the general state budget, and the Cortes Generales are responsible for its examination, amendment, and approval." The PP maintains that Sánchez, with his "withdrawal," is "preventing" through "omission" the Congress and the Senate from fulfilling their constitutional mandate. Furthermore, "through the abuse of the extension, he is attributing to himself a power that does not correspond to him, authorizing expenses not foreseen in the 2023 budget and, therefore, not approved by the Cortes Generales," says the PP, which calls the "budget authorizations by other means" a "legal fraud."

"For three years, the government has systematically ignored the budgetary function of the Cortes Generales," complains the party, which sees this as a "lack of respect for the original function" of the legislature. The PP also asserts that "successive and concatenated extensions," beyond a single fiscal year, are also "unconstitutional." The PP interprets this as meaning that the Constitution only allows for extensions once: "[New ones] must be approved the following year due to the annual nature of the budget, not for the following two or three years." According to the PP, the current situation has nothing to do with previous extensions.

The other extensions

"Since the democratic transition, not counting the two extensions in 2024 and 2025, there have been nine budget extensions, five of which correspond to the years 2011, 2016, 2017, and 2018," the PP recalls, stating that they were extensions. This is the case of Mariano Rajoy's government, which approved a new budget project every year, but did so late, hence these extensions. "The current situation reflects a significant change. The government has inaugurated a new political form, excluding the Parliament," the PP maintains.

In the case of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, she did extend the 2019 budget for two consecutive years—in 2020 and 2021. In fact, this battle between Feijóo and Sánchez over the budget complicates the prospects for some of the regional presidents, who had to extend the 2024 budget during this fiscal year following the split with Vox. In response to this, in Extremadura, the leader of the autonomous community, María Guardiola, has already warned the other parties that if she fails to approve budgets for 2026, she will call early elections.