Will the new budgets be approved?
BarcelonaThis is the fundamental question. The budget project presented by Minister Alícia Romero has the potential to be approved and offers many lures for higher spending to be so. However, the centrality of budgets for a government means that approving them or not is equivalent to a vote of confidence, and there are parties that would approve these budgets but do not want to approve a vote of confidence. To put things in context, I will recall two recent cases. The first is the most immediate precedent: the non-approval of the budgets for the year 2024 presented by Minister Natàlia Mas at the beginning of the same year. They were good budgets, and expansive ones, which clearly stated the political priorities of President Pere Aragonès's government, but they were rejected for political reasons by the Comuns –after an exhausting negotiation between ERC and PSC.
This precedent suggests that ERC may want to return the blow of PSC's negotiating rigidity on that occasion. We can understand that. But, did President Aragonès do well to dissolve Parliament and call elections? I think it was a mistake, because he did not adequately value the importance of governing day-to-day, which is the opportunity to build trust with society and demonstrate the capacity to manage incidents and emergencies, such as the drought at the time. This does not require budgets, but it is essential. In other words, first conclusion: recommend to President Salvador Illa that he not fall into the temptation of calling elections if the budgets are rejected. Governing does not end with budgets.
The precedent of 2019
The other precedent I do not forget is the general state budgets for 2019 that Pedro Sánchez proposed at the beginning of the year. On that occasion, Sánchez presented very expansive budgets –particularly promising in terms of investment in Catalonia–. Pablo Iglesias, then vice-president, visited Oriol Junqueras in prison to ask for his support. Junqueras, right in the middle of the trial of the Procés leaders, did not consider it appropriate to support the budget project. A very promising budget was lost and, what is worse, the risk of an early election that Sánchez wanted to get rid of Podemos was taken. Sánchez dissolved the Courts, and this led to Podemos collapsing and Ciutadans gaining a lot of strength to the point of making a pact between PSOE and Ciutadans alone possible, which would have been catastrophic for Catalonia and for ERC.
Only Albert Rivera's infinite arrogance allowed the alliance not to materialize, that elections were repeated, that Ciutadans collapsed, and that Podemos and ERC became indispensable again. In other words: provoking early elections is a dangerous exercise. For ERC, it has recently gone badly. This can facilitate negotiation.
