María Jesús Montero: "We are confident that the budget project can be developed"

They will address the "sufficiency of resources" with the Government but will not reform the regional financing model

BARCELONA, 3 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The fourth vice president and Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, has said that the Government is certain that the General State Budgets for 2024 can be developed despite the PP rejecting the deficit path in the Senate: " "We are confident that the budget project can be developed."

"It is a way for the PP to try to put stones in the way, even if it means shooting itself in the foot of its own territorial administrations," he reproached in an interview in 'El Periódico' collected by Europa Press this Sunday.

Asked if they will reform the stability law to eliminate the possibility of a Senate veto, she responded: "It is legislation that is more than a decade old and that the PP approved with an absolute majority. In no other law is the Senate on equal terms. with the legislative power of Congress. There is an exceptional situation and perhaps in the future it would be good if it did not exist.

He has assured that he will convene the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF) very soon to convey to the communities their deficit objectives for 2024 and that his objective is to "bring the spending ceiling and stability objectives to the Council of Ministers as soon as possible." .

"It strikes me that it is taken for granted that the PP is going to prevent (in the Senate) the approval of the stability objectives for all subsectors. Is it going to prevent, by trying to harm the Government, the rest of the administrations "can you prepare your accounts?" he asked himself.

Regarding the criteria to extend the partial forgiveness of Catalonia's debt to the rest of the communities, he has detailed that they have to be studied and that "they are implicit within the agreement regarding the calculation of how this differential of resources that did not arrive affected the debt." .

"We have to start a round with all the communities that allows us to set the amounts. It is not something that is subject to subjective evaluations, it has its methodology. The figures that appear in the agreement with Catalonia are approximate and we will have to adjust every last euro" , has added.

She has considered that important leadership is needed within the parties to reform the regional financing system, something that according to her the PSOE does have but the PP does not: "At this moment the PP does not have strong leadership from Mr. Feijóo".

He has denied that the PSOE-ERC agreement includes creating a bilateral commission between the Government and the Generalitat to discuss financing, and has clarified that with Catalonia and with those territories that have a particularly significant debt situation they will hold "bilateral meetings to discuss the sufficiency of resources".

"But in no case to address a reform of the regional financing model of the general regime bilaterally. A regional financing model, so that no one is confused, must be voted on in Congress," he stressed, adding verbatim that the Government will find a territorial fit of Catalonia in Spain for the coming decades.