Congress reanalyzes spending and debt objectives after being shot down by the PP in the Senate

The Government will have to gather all its partners again to validate their figures and then wait for the PP to lift the veto in the Senate.

MADRID, 25 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Plenary Session of Congress next Thursday will debate and vote for the second time on the budget stability and public debt objectives for Public Administrations between 2024 and 2026, which were rejected in the Senate on February 7 thanks to the PP's absolute majority.

The Lower House already approved the objectives and the rebalancing plan on January 10 in a session held in the Senate as Congress was in progress.

The votes in favor of PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Junts, PNV, Bildu, Podemos, BNG and Canary Coalition, compared to the votes against PP, Vox and UPN, allowed the Government to overcome the process. Of course, it had to be in a second vote because in the first one a Sumar deputy, Gerardo Pisarello, made a mistake, and Junts preferred not to participate.

As there was a tie of 171 votes in that first attempt, the vote had to be repeated, and that gave Junts time to close an agreement with the PSOE in exchange for its support to, among other measures, commit to transferring immigration policies to Catalonia. Already in the second vote and after making commitments, 179 votes were cast in favor and 171 against.

But almost a month after that vote, the PP asserted its absolute majority in the Senate and overturned the objectives, thus forcing the Government, as established by the Budgetary Stability Law, to return to the box at the beginning of the process. parliamentary and approve the deficit path again in the Council of Ministers on February 13.

For the vote on Thursday, February 29, the PSOE will have to reunite all its allies and not make mistakes to carry out its plan. Later, history could repeat itself if the PP chooses to veto the stability objectives again, something that has never happened and that, for the moment, the Executive does not contemplate in its plans.

But if a second rejection is carried out in the Senate, the Ministry of Finance has a 'plan B', which is a report from the State Attorney's Office that supports setting the deficit path sent to Brussels in April within the framework of the Stability Program. Parliamentary sources confirmed to Europa Press that the report is based on article 135.2 of the Spanish Constitution to avoid blocking the Government's budgetary capacity.

Of course, the first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, warned that the objectives presented to Brussels are more demanding than those proposed to the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council, so the autonomies, mostly governed by the PP, They would have less spending capacity.

In any case, the stability objectives that will be debated on Thursday are the same ones that were endorsed by Congress in January. These are accompanied by the rebalancing plan and the non-financial spending limit, the latter known as the "spending ceiling" and which is not put to a vote.

The objectives set a deficit of 3% in 2024 for all Public Administrations, 2.7% in 2025 and 2.5% in 2026. In the case of the autonomies, a target of 0.1% was established for 2024. By 2025 and 2026, communities will seek budget balance.

For local entities, the budget balance (0%) from 2024 to 2026 was also agreed, while for Social Security the deficit was set at 0.2% for 2024, 0.1% in 2025 and 0% in 2026. The spending ceiling, for its part, rises to 199,120 million euros in 2024, 0.5% more compared to the previous year, including funds from the European Union.

Regarding the public debt objective, the Government foresees 106.3% of GDP in 2024, 105.4% in 2025 and 104.4% in 2026. Finally, the spending rule is at a 2.6% for this year, 2.7% in 2025 and 2.8% in 2026.