The PSC maintains its refusal to validate the universal basic income of the Government in the budgets

This Friday the budgets of the Generalitat de Catalunya for 2023 will be voted definitively in the Parliament after the pact reached in three groups between the ERC Government, the PSC and En Comú Podem, but republicans and socialists maintain a point of friction for the so-called rent universal basic that, although it does not jeopardize the future of the accounts, will make a dent in the relations between the two.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
08 March 2023 Wednesday 06:25
17 Reads
The PSC maintains its refusal to validate the universal basic income of the Government in the budgets

This Friday the budgets of the Generalitat de Catalunya for 2023 will be voted definitively in the Parliament after the pact reached in three groups between the ERC Government, the PSC and En Comú Podem, but republicans and socialists maintain a point of friction for the so-called rent universal basic that, although it does not jeopardize the future of the accounts, will make a dent in the relations between the two. The PSC refuses to validate the measure that the Catalan Executive has included in the accompanying law, endowed with 40 million, and will stop its implementation in the parliamentary vote.

The first secretary of the PSC and head of the opposition in Parliament, Salvador Illa, has reaffirmed this Wednesday the veto of his group in the pilot test of the universal basic income, after last Friday, socialists and JxCat allied themselves in the Parliament's Economy Commission to suppress the monetary allocation that the Government had reflected in the accompanying law. Illa justified that decision during a visit to the El Prat de Llobregat (Baix Llobregat) water treatment and desalination plants: "It seemed to us that, for a multitude of reasons, it was not a propitious year to dedicate 40 million (euro) to carry out a test and we wanted it to be suspended," he said.

The attitude of the Socialists has angered ERC, which has criticized the PSC for a decision that they consider to be in breach of the budget agreement signed on February 1. However, Illa has argued today that "in the budget agreement with the Government, which we maintain and will comply with, there was no mention of universal basic income", therefore "we are people of our word and we comply point by point with our agreements".

Indeed, in the agreement signed with the PSC there is no explicit precept on this measure, but ERC accepts one point of it, section 12, relating to 'commitments', in which it is explicitly indicated that the PSC-Units undertakes to vote in favor of the budget project and the fiscal and financial measures bill, and to "guarantee that the content of the bills is not altered during their parliamentary processing." ERC denounces that the amendment to suppress the PSC-Units on basic income alters the aforementioned accompanying law and therefore the Socialists would be breaching the agreement.

In the PSC they allege that they have never seen the accompanying law until it ended up in Parliament, although it has been designed for months, and they accuse the ERC Government of wanting to "sneak in through the back door" a measure with which they cannot they agree. Those of Illa do not see it appropriate to implement a measure that is not implemented "in any country in the world" and that implies a very high public expense that, due to the context of the inflationary crisis, should be dedicated to other matters.

The universal basic income pilot plan is one of the projects that the Department of the Presidency plans to deploy during this mandate. The Government has calculated that some 5,000 people will receive the income, so that 2,500 would be randomly chosen from among all the addresses in Catalonia and the remaining 2,500 would correspond to the population of two municipalities that have not yet been determined.

This "individual", "universal" and "unconditional" monetary allocation would be carried out through two tranches. One, with an amount of 800 euros per month for adults who meet the requirements to receive it, and another of 300 euros for minors.

Taking advantage of the visit to the El Prat water treatment plants, Illa has shown her concern about the way in which the Government is acting in the management of the drought, recently approving a decree with a "sanctioning spirit" on the municipalities, in instead of "collaborating" with them and increasing investment to contain the crisis. The leader of the PSC has lamented that "precious years have been lost" to invest in water infrastructure, and "we prefer an emphasis on investments and not on sanctions to the municipal administration", he has remarked.