Montero blocked the way for Díaz: improve unemployment or expand casualties for mothers

If the coalition government left the fiscal agreement largely satisfied, in the budget negotiations there have been winners and losers.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
04 October 2022 Tuesday 23:41
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Montero blocked the way for Díaz: improve unemployment or expand casualties for mothers

If the coalition government left the fiscal agreement largely satisfied, in the budget negotiations there have been winners and losers. The last hours of the talks between PSOE and United We Can were tense for the purple party, but relatively comfortable for the PSOE, which had already set on Monday that the bill would be approved yes or yes in the Council of Ministers this week.

The Treasury did not want to maintain uncertainty until the end, like last year. The Treasury team, headed by María José Gualda, Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenditures, was clear with its partners: the package that UP presented to them had too many spending commitments. Solved the differences by Defense, they had to choose. Or improve unemployment benefits and expand child-rearing benefits, or prolong maternity and paternity leave.

Treasury configured some budgets with a "conservative" forecast of income, sources of the negotiation admit. But Montero was clear that he could not commit spending next year with all the measures proposed by the purples. “Not everything can enter”, was the message they sent.

In reality, it was United We Can who, before the bolt imposed by the Treasury, had to choose. This was transmitted from the socialist area to Díaz's team, with Josep Vendrell, his chief of staff, and Nacho Álvarez, Secretary of State for Social Rights. The ball changed courts.

Until Monday, UP was fighting for half a dozen key measures for several of its ministries. Work called for improving unemployment benefits and raising the Iprem. Social Rights, the universal benefit of 100 euros per child from 0 to 3 years old or extend sick leave for parents. Something had to be given up.

There was no good harmony in the purple area in the decisive hours. Treasury, meanwhile, discreetly closed the yellow book, without telling its partners everything that the budgets would contain. The balance, finally, decanted on the side of Work. Díaz tied practically all the measures that he claimed. But Ione Belarra's apartment was left halfway. He failed to print one more pass to the family law, which will be approved in the next Council of Ministers, with maternity leave being extended to 24 weeks. And the key law for Social Rights, the Housing Law, was missing.

Belarra claimed to link the budget negotiation to tie some commitment to regulate all rents. The PSOE refused. And Díaz “did not lead”, according to some internal voice, at the decisive moment. In the previous hours, the second vice president affirmed that there were substantial differences with her partners, but the fact that the housing norm had finally been decoupled from the agreement generated uneasiness. Belarra, in fact, has already opted for the "mobilization" to twist the arm of his partners. The law runs a serious risk of not seeing the light.

The 2023 budgets will enter Congress at the end of the week with mixed feelings in the coalition