At the beginning of 2020, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero (Seville, 1966), was in the running for a possible economic vice presidency in the first coalition government since the Second Republic, a position that finally fell to the minister. of Economy, Nadia Calviño, with a more technical profile and experience in European institutions. The promotion has come in 2023, almost four years later: Montero will be head of public finances and fourth vice president.
If in the previous legislature the most difficult thing seemed to be the approval of the general budgets of the State, in this new stage the challenge, after three years of suspended fiscal rules, is to reduce the deficit and public debt, which exceeds 100% of the GDP after the extraordinary measures adopted by covid and the war in Ukraine.
Montero, who is the deputy general secretary of the PSOE, has participated in the negotiations for Pedro Sánchez to achieve re-election. The minister, who had already been Minister of the Treasury in Andalusia since 2013 until she came to the Council of Ministers, has a degree in Medicine and Surgery and has a master’s degree in Hospital Management from the EADA Business School. Before delving into finance, she was for nine years at the head of the Health Department of the Junta de Andalucía, which she joined in 2004 under the guidance of Manuel Chaves.
Now Montero will have to be in charge of preparing and presenting the non-financial spending limit (expenditure ceiling), prior to the General State Budget bill (PGE) for 2024, taking into account that Brussels plans to reactivate the fiscal rules this year. next year. For this reason, and in the face of such a fragmented parliamentary arc, he will have to make an effort to gather enough support so that, for the fourth consecutive year, new public accounts can see the light of day in Spain by 2024.
In fact, the budget plan sent to Brussels last October already includes a deficit forecast of around 3% for next year and a public debt ratio next year of 106.3%, which will mean a reduction of 14 points compared to its value in 2020.
Already at the beginning of the previous legislature, Montero sounded like a possible PSOE candidate in the event of an electoral advance in Andalusia, just as it happened. But the PSOE finally turned to the former mayor of Seville, Juan Espadas. With the absolute majority of the PP, led by Juanma Moreno, the possibility of there being regional elections in the coming months is now far away. The next ones are in July 2026.
