This Wednesday, Treasury Councilors from the Valencian Community, Murcia, Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia asked the Government to “urgently” address the reform of the regional financing model and to convene the Conference of Presidents as soon as possible. Those responsible for the regional finances of these four territories have participated in the XI Conference of the Network of Researchers in Regional Financing and Financial Decentralization in Spain (RIFDE), on regional finances, which since yesterday has brought together almost 70 experts, including researchers from institutions such as Fedea, AIReF or the Ivie, in Valencia.
In a joint appearance before their intervention, the representatives of the four autonomous governments have agreed to express the necessary reform of a model that has expired since 2014. And for this they have appealed to the Government of Spain to convene the Conference of Presidents, a body that It has not met since March 2022, still in a pandemic and with the recent threat of the eruption of the La Palma volcano among the priority issues.
“After many years, a deficit has been generated that weighs us down greatly and that should be addressed in the Conference of Presidents and in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council,” said Ruth Merino, spokesperson for the Valencian government and Minister of Finance and Public Administration. . The same request has been made by Juan Alfonso Ruiz, Finance Minister of the Government of Castilla-La Mancha, who has cited the “principle of institutional loyalty” to solve a situation that requires the State to “inject more resources into the autonomies.” He has also proposed that an independent committee of experts make a proposal for later debate in the CPFF.
Ruiz has been more benevolent with the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, stating that “he trusts that the measures will be adopted” and has denied that his region (the only one of the four with a socialist government) presents treasury problems, as it does. They have recognized having the other three territories, all of them under popular management. In this sense, Merino has recalled the figure of 90 million euros of monthly deficit to address the current payments that the Generalitat Valenciana has, while Miguel Corgos, Minister of Finance of the Xunta de Galicia, has placed the same figure at 60 million euros.
When asked by journalists, Corgos has avoided taking a position on the request for the leveling fund, which the Valencian Community, Murcia and Castilla-La Mancha do demand. “What we ask is that the model be put on the table. It is going to be a game that we all have to enter,” said his advisor.
For his part, Luis Alberto Marín, Minister of Economy, Finance and Business of the Region of Murcia - who already showed his agreement with the Valencian proposal yesterday, days after the meeting between Fernando López-Miras and Carlos Mazón - has also insisted on that all the territories “sit at the table because there is more that unites us than separates us.” Marín has admitted “significant treasury tensions” and recalled that “since 2021 we have not heard anything about the minister's financing proposal.”
The first day of RIFDE was held yesterday and Ángel de la Fuente, director of Fedea, participated in the first session; Teresa García-Milá, director of the BSE, and Francisco Pérez, director of the Ivie, moderated by the professor of the University of Málaga, José Sánchez Maldonado. They all agreed on the need to update a financing system that has been extended for ten years, twice that of the General Council of the Judiciary, and to correct income inequalities between the different autonomous communities.
For Francisco Pérez, member of the commission of experts on Valencian underfinancing, the system approved in 2009 has “important design defects” from the perspective of the sufficiency of resources that the communities have and also of equity because the differences in income per inhabitant between regions rises up to 30 percentage points. The consequences of these dysfunctions are the inequality of resources in the regions and also the indebtedness, which became widespread during the financial crisis and keeps different communities out of the markets.
The director of the Ivie recalls that, although in recent years the increases in resources have been significant, these continue to be allocated using the “old criteria”, which is why the differences in resources per adjusted inhabitant between communities remain. In his opinion, these increases in financing, derived from the better general economic situation, should be used to correct inequalities without any autonomy losing resources. To do this, urgent reforms should be adopted, and “the first two steps should be the creation of a transitional fund to bring underfinanced communities closer to the average and, secondly, the compensation of the part of the debt caused by underfinancing, so they could return to the markets.”
