The Government squeezes the budget negotiation with ERC, PNV and Bildu

In the Government and the leadership of the socialist parliamentary group the calculators are smoking again.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
21 October 2022 Friday 00:33
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The Government squeezes the budget negotiation with ERC, PNV and Bildu

In the Government and the leadership of the socialist parliamentary group the calculators are smoking again. In Moncloa they maintain full confidence that the draft general budget of the State for 2023 will overcome its first obstacle, in the vote on October 27 of the amendments to the entirety. But they also assume that the three determining groups so that these accounts can be processed – Esquerra, the PNV and EH Bildu – will maintain suspense over their decision until today, at 2:00 p.m., the deadline to register the amendments in Congress expires. return of budgets. Until then, the Government will squeeze this first negotiation out of the accounts to avoid leaks in the investiture block.

Yesterday, without great surprises, some of the positions of the groups that were pending a decision were already confirmed –Ciudadanos and Junts, in favor of knocking down the budgets; while the PDECat and the BNG announced that they will not veto the processing of the accounts–, which clarifies the parliamentary marker, since all the return amendments are voted on as a block. The Government thus added up to 166 votes yesterday to reject these amendments in their entirety, which for its part registered 159 seats in favor. The final result, therefore, will depend on the 24 votes gathered by Esquerra (13), the PNV (6) and EH Bildu (5).

The Minister of Finance and Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, trusted again yesterday that the usual partners of the Government do not finally choose to present amendments to all the budgets, so that they can continue processing them. "We are talking with all those who have been regular partners, such as PNV and ERC," said Montero. And she assured that they will continue to do so today, until the deadline to register these amendments expires.

The Minister of the Presidency and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños, spoke in the same vein: "We are talking with all the groups that know of the importance of these budgets and we are bringing positions closer together." “We are going to continue advancing so that Spain will soon have budgets for 2023 that protect the middle class and the workers of this country,” Bolaños confided.

Esquerra repeated late in the afternoon that they were still negotiating. The republican group, harassed by its former Junts partners, whose spokesperson, Míriam Nogueras, insisted yesterday that her group, unlike others, was not fooled by those who fail to fulfill their commitments – alluding to the low budget execution in Catalonia –, It continues to press for commitments from previous years, such as the Housing Law, to be fulfilled, and also aspires to achievements in terms of dejudicialization of the conflict, such as the reform of the Penal Code to adjust the types of rebellion and sedition to community law. With the municipal ones seven months away, ERC measures each step with the Government.

The Basque groups, PNV and EH-Bildu, for their part, kept the negotiations open yesterday and reserved the possibility of presenting an amendment to the whole, but they gave optimistic signals about the possibility of an agreement. The president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, assured that his party would rush deadlines to achieve the "best possible agreement", while from Bildu they insisted that they would press for ambitious social policies. In neither of the two cases did the amendment to the entirety seem likely last night. And if they do not present it, the negotiation with ERC becomes cheaper.