Negotiations to explore a possible agreement for the Generalitat's budget for next year are underway, but pessimism overflows among the eventual partners as a result of the "very slow pace" that the Government is printing to the contacts. So much so that the PSC has the impression that the Government is wasting their time.
Yesterday the technical meetings of the Government with the socialists began and today they will continue with the commons and with Junts. The order of these meetings gives rise to think that the Executive has changed its attitude towards Salvador Illa's party, in fact the Minister of Economy, Natàlia Mas assured yesterday in Catalunya Ràdio that there are no longer red lines to negotiate with the PSC, but Those from Illa left the meeting "disappointed" at the lack of specificity they found on the other side. "'We need more concrete figures!" they complained.
In addition, time is pressing because there are only three weeks left before an agreement can be forged that allows the accounts to be validated in Parliament at the end of January. Beyond, the pre-election calendar will complicate everything.
"There are 15 days left and no negotiations have started here," spokesperson Alícia Romero lamented yesterday, after attending the meeting with the general secretaries of the Presidency and Economy. Romero missed the presence of some "political leader" and also took few details of the Government's budget project, for which she warned that negotiating with this situation is "difficult."
The Socialists suspect that, deep down, the Aragonès Executive is delaying everything on purpose. "Either they want to avoid the photo with Illa before the municipal ones or they want us to support them with free estimates." But both common and the PSC have been warning actively and passively that the latter will not happen. They will only negotiate before the Government processes the accounts in Parliament. Afterwards, the room for maneuver to change items is limited because they cannot be moved between departments.
The poor progress of the contacts with the Socialists contrasts with the affinity that they show with the Executive of Pere Aragonès in fiscal matters. In the PSC they admit that the Government's proposals "are in line" with theirs.
"Our criterion is fiscal prudence," Mas remarked yesterday, for whom the deflation of personal income tax proposed by JxCat is a "headline" measure, "with a point of populism" and "regressive." The Economy approach fully coincides with the socialist one: “We have to be prudent. This is not the time to lower taxes when you have to strengthen the welfare state, and you have to be careful about raising them due to the increase in inflation,” said Romero.
Meanwhile, the presentation on Congressional Budgets closed yesterday afternoon, Thursday, the approval of the opinion that will go to the plenary session on the 21st, in the last step before final approval in the lower house. Most of the groups that supported the investiture, including the PNV, EH Bildu, Más País, Compromís, Teruel Existe or Coalición Canarias, saw their transactions approved to ensure investments in their territories. ERC does not appear on this list of groups that have closed agreements, which yesterday assured that there is still no pact to vote in favor of the budgets. However, in the vote he abstained in the final report of the presentation but voted in favor in most of the rest of the votes.
