More autonomy, stable financing and, in addition, greater resources. This is the claim raised this Wednesday by the president of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), Cristina Herrero, in a meeting held at the headquarters of the supervisory body. Herrero considers that the Government has lost “ambition” when evaluating “cross-cutting policies” and that, in her opinion, is worrying. To try to stop it, she has asked to renew the organic law that regulates the functioning of the Tax Authority, which, in her opinion, has become stagnant in the past.
“The time has come to undertake structural changes that allow the institution to perform this function [of evaluation] with the necessary economic and human resources and giving a greater role to AIReF in decision-making,” the independent body has claimed. This is not the first time that Herrero denounces a lack of resources due to the increasing volume of work that AIReF has to undertake.
In order to reform the organic law of the Tax Authority, an agreement would be needed “unanimously between PSOE and PP, Herrero has defended. The changes should be agreed upon so as not to be subject to political vicissitudes. “I want to think that in the same way that my appointment obtained unanimity in Congress, why not achieve unanimity in a reform of the AIReF organic law?” he asked himself. It must be remembered that Herrero succeeded José Luis Escrivá when Pedro Sánchez decided to appoint him Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration in January 2020.
Herrero has denounced, and this is not the first time he has done so, the absence of an evaluation of medium and long-term public policies in matters of health, education and employment.
For example, when analyzing the effectiveness of the Minimum Living Income, one of the most important economic measures approved in the last legislature. Herrero has insisted that the benefit still does not have an achievable execution objective. For AIReF, if the objective to be achieved with this policy is to prevent the risk of poverty, it would be necessary to define and make known the threshold at which the term poverty has been set.
Cristina Herrero has carried out a pessimistic analysis of the economic situation and has once again warned of the “vulnerability” of public finances in a general economic context of slowdown.
Looking ahead to the next big decision that the Government has to make, the sending of the Budget Plan to Brussels before October 15, the president of AIReF has stated that she hopes that “it will be very continuous and without major changes with respect to what could be be provided for in the update of the Stability Program.”
Regarding European funds and the recent approval by the European Commission of the addendum to the Recovery Plan, Herrero has indicated that although it is a little early" to analyze these additional resources, the problem that exists regarding these funds "is the lack of knowledge of detailed information about the plan to be able to make a diagnosis.” The Executive, for its part, spoke yesterday of a “reindustrialization” of the national productive fabric.
“We have to be vigilant that the Recovery Plan has the transformative character that we need it to have to have an impact in terms of economic growth for the coming years,” he insisted.
