The reform of regional financing advances between regional rejection and blockade in Congress

The new regional financing designed by the Government is being ignored amid almost unanimous complaints from the communities and with little chance of succeeding in Congress.

After its approval this Friday in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF), where it has gone ahead with the only votes of Catalonia and the Canary Islands and the rejection of the rest of the territories, the Ministry of Finance plans to take it to the Council of Ministers in the "coming weeks", as announced by the head of the portfolio, Arcadi España.

Then will come the most difficult exam, that of Parliament, the result of which does not look promising for the Executive. Junts, whose support is essential for the initiative to become law once the PP is stuck in the no vote, continues for the moment demanding a Basque-style economic agreement for Catalonia. Everything that does not involve removing the community from the common system, the independence party has recalled, will have its veto in Congress.

This Friday, Josep Maria Cruset, deputy of Junts per Catalunya in Congress, announced that his group will present an amendment to the entire regional financing reform plan, with the aim of taking advantage of the “historic opportunity represented by the negotiation of the system” to demand the agreement and the unique model for Catalonia.

“We want the money of the Catalans to stay in Catalonia, in the same way that the money of the Basques stays in the Basque Country,” summarized Cruset. “We hope that the Catalan political parties, the deputies of Esquerra, the Comuns and the Socialists, give their support,” he added as a challenge.

The retaining wall that Junts is building, together with the blockade imposed by the traditional opposition parties, makes the central government aware of the obstacles that it will encounter on the path of the parliamentary process, which also has a reduced time window.

Next year the electoral supercycle arrives - general, regional and local elections are held - and politics is already beginning to get into pre-campaign mode for both the opposition and the Executive. This not only intends to advance the financing reform, but insists that it will present new Budgets for 2027 even though it does not have support in Congress for now.

However, the Executive also trusts to be able to generate debate and bring closer positions with some groups thanks to the figures that the financing proposal puts on the table.

The new model, if approved, will increase by 21,000 million the resources that the central Administration puts each year in the common basket that provides money to the communities so that they can provide the public services in which they have powers, such as health, education or dependency.

It also contemplates, although outside the system, the launch of an additional fund of 3.3 billion euros that would help territories that receive less money per adjusted inhabitant than the average. Added to this is a new instrument that the Treasury is working on, and which has been agreed upon in the CPFF this Friday, which would take into account the externalities generated by mass tourism in some territories, as well as the risks derived from the forest mass and the outermost location.

The promise of this new instrument allows the Treasury to affirm that it is taking into account the requests, as disparate as the nature of each territory, of all the autonomous governments, is different. And at the same time reproach the PP communities for hiding behind their criticism of the reform their inability to agree on a common alternative.

The ministry also believes that the unity that the PP's autonomies try to show breaks down if some of the official responses are minimally scratched.

According to Treasury sources, the Valencian Government refused to negotiate bilaterally, but sent a document of allegations "with some striking points", such as the statement that the ministry's proposal represented a "great advance."

Unfortunately, they say in the Treasury, “they don't say that publicly.” In the department run by Arcadi Spain, they also do not understand that the Valencian Generalitat demands the suppression of the climate fund, when it is one of the territories most exposed to phenomena such as danas, or that it asks for debt forgiveness while the PP votes against this measure in Congress.

Along the same lines, and to delve into the antagonistic positions of some territories, the minister explained that a proposal from Andalusia on adjusted population - the technical criterion that allows the demographic casuistries of each region to be taken into account in the system - would completely harm Castilla y León.

With these examples, the ministry insists that the rejection of the reform expressed by some PP communities, especially those worst treated by the current model, is inexplicable unless it responds to political slogans dictated by the party's headquarters in Genoa.

“It is clear that the decision to vote yes or no is made by others, because it goes against their interests,” stated the head of the Treasury portfolio.

And this same logic applied to the parliamentary arena would also invalidate Junts' refusal to the new system, the Government believes.

They allege that Catalonia would be the community that would benefit the most (along with Andalusia) from the success of the initiative to try to overcome the resistance of the independence movement, which until now has been entrenched in maximalist requests.