The meeting for financing ends with reproaches and without new agreed actions

The meeting of elected representatives of the Corts Valencianes, Congress and Senate to advance proposals and concrete actions to improve financing was left halfway.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
03 June 2022 Friday 20:19
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The meeting for financing ends with reproaches and without new agreed actions

The meeting of elected representatives of the Corts Valencianes, Congress and Senate to advance proposals and concrete actions to improve financing was left halfway. If you wanted to go from words to deeds, you couldn't.

Nor did the format -with a string of speeches by deputies and senators with no room for subsequent negotiation- make it easier to finalize the agreements, so the only two more or less detailed proposals that were put on the table (Compromís and the PP) remained in the air.

The act was tarnished by the low presence of members of the Consell; Neither President Ximo Puig (absence that the opposition censored), nor the Minister of Finance, Arcadi Spain, attended the Valencian Parliament. In fact, only Minister Climent (from Compromís, the party that proposed the meeting) made an appearance.

The five formations that took the floor -PSPV, PP, Ciudadanos, Compromís and Unides Podem- agreed on the diagnosis but did not advance on possible solutions. In fact, the interventions were led by partisan reproaches about who was to blame for the delay in reforming the financing model.

The trustee of the PSPV in Les Corts, Ana Barceló, defended that the greatest strength of the Valencians in this debate continues to be unity. She demanded a temporary equalization fund and compensation for the regional debt linked to the financing. "Whether this demand succeeds will depend on our political ability to forge a great deal," she said.

His partner in Congress, Vicent Sarrià, took advantage of his speech to cover the backs of the Government of Pedro Sánchez -he applauded the continuous transfers to the autonomies- after a harsh intervention by the PP.

The trustee spokesperson for the PP, María José Catalá, had refuted that "unity is strength if objectives are achieved, otherwise it produces melancholy." She indicated that yesterday's meeting would be of no use without specific agreements and put three on the table: the urgent call, in June, of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council to respond to the allegations presented by the autonomies; the immediate income, before the month of July 2022, of the 1,336 million that appear included in the budget of the Generalitat Valenciana 2022; and the study of mechanisms to compensate the historical debt suffered by the Community.

A bet that the senator of the PP, Alberto Fabra, reiterated, after disfiguring the PSPV that it voted against in the Senate (and Compromís that it abstained) from a motion of the popular ones demanding, precisely, a leveling fund.

Compromís, with the duet Aitana Mas and Joan Baldoví, upped the ante of the PP -which they remembered for its years of absolute majority without reforming the system- and explained that they have registered a bill that, if approved in Congress, would have effects on the distribution of money.

They pointed out that their proposal involves changing the concept of "adjusted population" to "population by right" to eliminate "imbalance factors" and replace the different funds and variables in which the current model is structured with a single one: the "fund of guarantee of public services. Baldoví exhorted the Valencian deputies of the Congress to be useful.

Only Citizens picked up the gauntlet. Her deputy in Congress, María Muñoz, responded that Compromís will count on Ciudadanos "to work on that law, amend it and make it a consensus." Likewise, she advanced, without specifying much more, that her formation will propose in the Lower House a calendar with dates and specific action plans to address the reform of the regional financing system.

For his part, the Podem deputy Ferran Martínez warned that the non-presence of Vox has broken the unanimity of all the parties on this issue: "That a political force does not recognize the problem of financing and that hypothetically could become part of the government of the Generalitat is terrible". Martínez called for linking the reform of the financing system with a fiscal reform so that there are more resources in the system and that no autonomy is harmed by the new model.

After the speeches and despite the optimism shown by the president of the Corts Valencianes, Enric Morera, who tried to act as host, it became clear that all the groups with parliamentary representation -except the extreme right- agree on the problem but they fail to agree on measures to combat it and put an end to it. A difficulty that, one year before the elections, will increase even more.