The opposition blocks the legislative activity of the Government for its delay with the budgets

The passivity of the Government with the new budgets is causing the exasperation of its eventual partners, who without understanding what the absence of negotiations beyond the incipient first contacts responds to, have decided to show again the Government that it has the negligible parliamentary support of ERC, insufficient to carry out any legislative initiative in Parliament.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
15 November 2022 Tuesday 06:33
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The opposition blocks the legislative activity of the Government for its delay with the budgets

The passivity of the Government with the new budgets is causing the exasperation of its eventual partners, who without understanding what the absence of negotiations beyond the incipient first contacts responds to, have decided to show again the Government that it has the negligible parliamentary support of ERC, insufficient to carry out any legislative initiative in Parliament.

In the absence of negotiations to approve the accounts, Junts, PSC and En Comú Podem have decided to start blocking the legislative capacity of the Executive of Pere Aragonès, preventing the processing of two decree laws of the Government, one that intended to increase by an additional 376 million euros the 2022 health budget, and another to favor internal promotion in public employment, speed up the filling of vacancies and reduce temporary employment.

Both had to be validated by the Catalan Chamber within 30 days of their approval by the Government, so there is time until mid-December, but for now, the opposition, practically in bloc, has ended up preventing the first procedure, its admission for processing for debate and voting in the next plenary session.

"The Government has not been able to incorporate any of the points that it intended to include in the agenda of the next plenary session because it does not have a sufficient majority", confirmed the spokesperson for the PSC-Units Alícia Romero, who attributes this circumstance to the lack of a dialogue attitude and negotiator of ERC and, consequently, of the Government.

This circumstance connects with the situation in which the conversations to agree on the next budgets find themselves. After 9 days of the last meeting that PSC and common had with the Ministers of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà and of Economy, Natàlia Mas, there has been no more contact. With no ongoing negotiations or forecast of meetings with the groups, the PSC and the commons express their weariness with the attitude of President Pere Aragonès.

Nobody wants to guess about the reasons for this delay, but the truth is that, since the last contacts, the reform of the crime of sedition and embezzlement has emerged. Sources from the commons suspect that the Government does not want to start formal negotiations for the budgets until they see what happens in Madrid with these reforms, although in the PSC they emphasize that there is already a proposal presented on the reform of sedition that has practically ensured its validation, and instead displace the embezzlement reform of the agreement between PSOE and ERC.

The political situation around the budgets is generating problems for the Government, since in addition to seeing its legislative capacity cut short, it will also bring other consequences. In this sense, the PSC has finally decided to take a motion to Parliament in which they promote the disapproval of the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, for his "very bad management" of him at the head of the Mossos d'Esquadra. The Socialists are in talks precisely with Junts and the commons to try to move it forward, foreseeably in the next plenary session.

In addition, the commons have put all the meat on the grill to criticize the drift of the Government in the health field and Junts has demanded the appearance of the president in Parliament to explain the reform of the Penal Code agreed with the PSOE.

In the first case, taking advantage of the great impact of the demonstration this weekend in Madrid due to the situation of primary care in the community, the president of the commons group, Jéssica Albiach, has warned Aragonès "to take note, If you don't want the same thing to happen to you."

Albiach has shown at a press conference the result of his attempt to make an appointment with his GP, but the result was a message that reads: "It is not possible to schedule an appointment in person in the next 30 days." "This is the situation of public health in Catalonia", he denounced, before warning Aragonès that "the white tide" that took to the streets in Madrid "will reach the Generalitat if the president does not change".

With this scenario, the PSC and the Commons are pessimistic about the possibility that there may be budgets in Catalonia next year. Especially the Socialists, for whom the lack of a negotiating attitude makes them suspect that, deep down, the Government has drawn up a strategy whose objective is to transfer the blame to the eventual partners.

The Government conveyed to both groups the will to approve the accounts in the respective meetings and demanded a list of proposals to begin negotiations, but both PSC and En Comú Podem do not want to send them without having entered into negotiations or, at least having seen what the Executive's budget priorities consist of. "They want us to send them our proposals to incorporate them into the budget project in some way and reduce negotiating capacity," interpret sources from both parties.

At the moment, there are no meetings on anyone's agenda, but both the PSC and the commons have already made it very clear that they will not be able to count on them if the Government decides to take a budget project to Parliament without first having negotiated and agreed on it in its entirety.