The partners of the Government save their letters for the Budgets and already demand advances in the Housing Law

Treasury initiates contacts with its allies and assumes that the negotiation will not be easy

MADRID, 9 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The main parliamentary partners of the Government are reserving their cards for the negotiation of the next General State Budgets of 2023, but from the outset they maintain the Housing Law and its unblocking as one of the main demands on the table.

Thus, and unlike previous years, formations such as Esquerra Republicana, EH-Bildu and the PNV, have opted for a lower profile in recent days, without detailing their objectives for the negotiation of the new accounts recently agreed within the Government. and already presented in Congress.

This same week, the deputy of Más País, Íñigo Errejón, explained his discretion in this regard, assuring that the Government was more inclined to agree on amendments if these had not been previously known through the media, justifying therefore not giving more details. on the proposals forwarded to the Ministry of Finance.

From ERC, they refer to the statements of their parliamentary spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, who in each intervention has repeated that the Government "knows perfectly" what his formation is pursuing. This Tuesday, after the agreement between the PSOE and United We Can, he warned that they will not accept pressure and, in any case, pointed out that without an agreement to carry out the Housing Law, the negotiations "start badly"

"Some Budgets that do not contemplate the Housing Law, directly or indirectly, start badly," said Rufián, who recalled the demands of housing groups such as the PAH or the Tenants' Union, as well as respect for Catalan regulation.

The EH-Bildu spokeswoman, Mertxe Aizpurua, valued the social nature of the budget project, but also recognized that the budget negotiation should serve to "press and get something more" from the PSOE in the Housing Law. "We take advantage of all possible frameworks, we fight for them on every occasion and the Budgets are," she stated in an interview on the RNE program 'Parlamento'.

Other Bildu claims go through expanding social protection measures, making permanent the new taxes on energy companies, banks and large fortunes proposed by the Executive, and lowering the threshold of the rate for the rich so that it is not limited to assets greater than three million .

The Housing Law was one of the issues that focused the negotiation within the Government, at the request of United We Can, but it was finally closed without any progress, focusing the agreement on the recovery of social benefits and conciliation measures.

The Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, has criticized as "absurd and ridiculous" that, after reaching an agreement for the previous Budgets with her partner, the Housing Law formed part of the negotiation of the new accounts, but assumes which may be one of the ERC claims.

"If now ERC wants to propose that the Budget take into account the Housing Law, we will talk to get the public accounts and they will be the ones who have to set their priorities," he told RNE.

Montero assumes that, once the Budgets have been presented, it is now his turn to "sweat the shirt" to reissue the support, with a view to ensuring a majority in the first vote on the accounts, scheduled for October 27, and rejecting the amendments to the totality that PP, Vox and Cs will presumably present to bring down the project. The deadline approved by Congress to register these amendments ends on Friday, October 21.

If the entire debate is overcome, the Government would still have room to finish tying all the supports, since the project would be examined first in the Budget Committee and then in the Plenary Session of Congress. The final votes to approve the bills and send them to the Senate are scheduled for the week of November 21-24.

From the Treasury they recognize that these contacts have already begun with all the partners and foresee greater difficulty in reaching an agreement with the ERC, recalling that, a year ago, both the Republicans and the PNV threatened to present a return amendment, finally aborted when reaching an agreement.

On that occasion, the understanding was reached with matters unrelated to the accounts, since with ERC the main conflict was the Audiovisual Law, while in the PNV it was the transfer of powers to the Basque Country in the management of the minimum vital income.

THE DISTANCE HOUSING LAW TO PNV AND PDeCAT

However, the Housing Law is one of the issues in which the bloc formed by United We Can, ERC and EH-Bildu does not agree with PNV and PDeCAT, contrary to the intervention in the real estate market proposed by the Executive in its proposal, and even more to take it further.

In fact, from the PDeCAT its spokesman, Ferrán Bel, celebrated after the agreement between PSOE and United We Can for the Budgets that the new accounts would be disassociated from this legislative project, as well as from the tax on large fortunes, which they do not share either.

From this formation they choose to be discreet regarding their claims in the negotiation, but they assure that they will work to "solve problems that are of concern in Catalonia" and "get territorial investments" in this community.

For the PNV, the president of the party in Vizcaya, Itxaso Atutxa, has recognized that the transfer of powers and the Budgets are "different things", although she has lamented the "little political decision" of the Government to comply with the calendar.

The Basque nationalists anticipate that the talks started 15-20 days ago with the Treasury will intensify these weeks with the accounts already presented, with the objective in the negotiation of "negotiating the lives of the citizens of the Basque Autonomous Community and the Foral Community of Navarre".

Compromís's assessment after the presentation of the new accounts was to highlight the "lights" of social policies, but also its "many shadows", which in the opinion of its deputy, Joan Baldoví, are in the planned investment in Alicante --" Far below expectations"--, but also in Valencia. "There is a long road to negotiation," he anticipates.

On the part of Teruel Exists, they consider the accounts "clearly insufficient for Teruel, Aragon and the fight against depopulation", and mark as a "minimum and inexcusable condition to support the Budgets that operating aid be implemented for companies in very sparsely populated areas ". These aids, he recalls, were agreed in the last Budgets and have not yet been developed.

For his part, the president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla (PRC), has made support for the Budgets conditional on the accounts contemplating the 33 million that remain to pay off the debt of the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital and the investments that are needed to that all sections of the high-speed train to Alar del Rey (Palencia) be under construction in 2023.

Finally, the BNG makes its support subject to the fulfillment of pending agreements and investments, fundamentally in railways to compensate for a "historical backwardness" in Galicia, such as the lack of a Cercanías network in any of the cities, but also in industrial and energy matters.