The PSC presses the Government for the budget agreement: "Either all or nothing"

The PSC places the ball in the Government's roof after the last budget meeting held this Wednesday in Parliament.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
04 January 2023 Wednesday 06:32
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The PSC presses the Government for the budget agreement: "Either all or nothing"

The PSC places the ball in the Government's roof after the last budget meeting held this Wednesday in Parliament. According to what they say, "there has been no progress" because the Cabinet of Pere Aragonès has yet to make the pertinent bobbin lace to make all the demands of the Socialists compatible with their interests and what has already been agreed with the commoners. And for the Socialists there is no room for half measures: "The agreement has to be for the entire package of measures" proposed a couple of weeks ago, they remark.

The message contrasts again with the optimism of the Catalan Executive, for whom the meeting has been "profitable" and that "it has served to face the final stretch of the negotiations". In fact, government sources say they are "optimistic" and point out that This Thursday there will be two more meetings at the Palau de la Generalitat, one of a more technical nature, focused on specific measures and figures, which are still being negotiated.

Until the agreement emerges, the Socialists are inflexible. "Either all or nothing", sum up party sources after the meeting. The PSC delegation has made it known to the one headed by the Ministers of Presidency and Economy, Laura Vilagrà and Natàlia Mas, that "all" the proposals put forward by Salvador Illa's party a couple of weeks ago must fit into the budget. And the Socialists reduce their margin of cession on their extensive proposal because, according to what they say, an exercise of prioritization and resignation has already been carried out in it. “It is not an alternative budget; It is not what we would do if we were in the Government ”, they justify.

Thus, the PSC expects the Government to accommodate all its measures, "both those that have a budgetary impact and those that do not", they qualify, and for this reason they are summoned to continue negotiating in the coming days, as indicated by the spokesperson for the PSC- Units, Alícia Romero after the meeting with the Government.

The leader has insisted that "the responsibility lies with the Government", so that "they are the ones who have to put everything together to bring a budget proposal to Parliament with sufficient support so that an agreement can be reached". That is why she has called on the Catalan Executive to "accelerate the acceptance and fit of the socialist proposals" in order to reach an agreement as soon as possible.

Romero has removed any prospect of an agreement in the next few hours, but has not ruled out the possibility that it will emerge next week: "It depends on them," he has summoned. And from the Government they come to confirm this impression, ensuring that they do not rule out "being able to have budgets next week"

The Socialists are inflexible in the negotiations encouraged by the weakness of a Government based on the 33 ERC deputies, the same ones that the PSC has. "No one has a majority," Romero recalled, which is why the Socialists want to leave an indelible stamp on the budgets with measures such as the unblocking of large projects such as the Hard Rock, the expansion of El Prat airport or the fourth ring road between Sabadell and Terrassa .

Also with more political issues, such as the brake on the expansion of the Government delegations abroad or the withdrawal of control of the distribution of subsidies to the media. Although the Socialists warn that there are even discrepancies in matters of education or infrastructure such as the Barcelona metro that, according to PSC sources, do not allow an agreement to be taken for granted yet, far from it.

The content of the negotiations between the Government and PSC is disturbing the commons, which already have an agreement closed with the Catalan Executive for the accounts. Issues such as the aforementioned macro-projects and taxation collide with socialist demands, which is why the leader of the purple formation in Catalonia, Jéssica Albiach, wanted to raise her voice this Wednesday.

Albiach has been critical of the possibility of the Government accepting socialist demands such as the unlocking of the Hard Rock. In statements to Efe, he has assured that "he does not contemplate" that this proposal be accepted as part of the budget agreement and has claimed that his agreement with the Government "has to reach the vote intact", which also implies that the pacts " later" with "other political forces cannot go in the opposite line" to what they have agreed with them.

For the common people, the Hard Rock project is "unsustainable from all points of view", so if the Government accepted it, "it would be going against its own environmental reports", alluding to the Climate Action Department . And he has warned the PSC that "for socialist voters it would be inexplicable for their leader, Salvador Illa, to knock down some budgets that make us move forward and place us at the forefront in investment in primary care throughout the State due to an outdated country project of bloodletting and compulsive gambling such as Hard Rock".