The Government approved this Tuesday in the second round the bill to forgive up to 83,000 million of debt to the autonomous communities. The law will now travel to the Congress of Deputies, where it faces difficult parliamentary processing and will, predictably, meet with the blocking of Junts. The independence party led by Carles Puigdemont continues to maintain that it will stop the Government’s initiatives, despite the attempts at approach by the Executive.
The bill that now reaches the Cortes proposes that the State assume a maximum of 83,252 million euros of the regional debt. A figure that would allow savings in interest of around 6.7 billion euros, the minister spokesperson, Pilar AlegrÃa, recalled in the press conference after the ministers’ meeting. An amount of savings that the Government insists can be used to improve public services, but that organizations such as Airef have indicated does not influence the spending rule. So, consequently, it would not allow a greater margin in the disbursement that public administrations can make.
Last September, when the Council of Ministers first approved the condonation, MarÃa Jesús Montero, promised to have the law ready before April so that the communities that want to benefit from the reduction can outline the technical details before the summer. The first vice president and Minister of Finance then revealed that The autonomies will have a limited time to request condonationalthough he did not reveal more details about the deadlines.
Even if the law to forgive the debt passes through Congress, something that seems complicated given the delicate balance of forces, it will have been of no use if the autonomous communities do not request it. The autonomous governments of the PPwhich directs 11 of the 15 autonomies that could opt for the reduction (Navarra and the Basque Country are excluded as they do not belong to the common regime), They continue to reject the measure en bloc.
Los popular They reject the way in which the forgiveness has been designed – first agreed between the PSOE and ERC with a figure for Catalonia and then extended to the rest – and maintain that the interest savings cannot be used for social spending.
However, beyond the debate about whether or not it can be allocated to social spending, the truth is that the debt relief would alleviate the financial situation of many communities who are far from being able to finance themselves. Airef itself, although it has been criticism of the design of the standardrecognizes that the financial sustainability of the communities would improve “significantly.” Sources from the organization indicated in November that it would be difficult to understand that there are communities that reject this possibility, especially the worst financed.
