The Government of the Generalitat is forced to be cautious when referring to the approval of this year’s budgets, so beyond expressing its willingness to agree and encouraging the parties to reach an agreement as soon as possible, He can express little more in public. And for the ERC Executive alone, the approval of the new 2024 accounts is a balm in the middle of a storm fueled by crises such as drought, the management of health, education or renewable energies. It would mean approving the third consecutive budgets in Catalonia, something that has not happened for 10 years.
Between 1981 and 2022, the successive governments of the Generalitat approved the accounts every year, 19 in a timely manner – on January 1 of the corresponding year – and on 13 occasions subsequently, as will be done, if approved, this year . But since 2013, only six Catalan budgets have been approved (2014, 2015, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2023), five of them after the deadline, while the other five were not even presented or, as in 2016, were rejected. for the first time in the history of democracy. Now, the Government of Pere Aragonès wants to redirect the situation prior to the process, in which the normal thing was to approve the accounts even if they did not come into force on the first day of the year, and despite the pre-electoral context that exists.
“We are sure that we will be able to approve the budgets for the third consecutive year, something that has not happened for 10 years,” said the spokesperson for the Catalan Executive, Patrícia Plaja, at a press conference after the first meeting of the Consell Executiu this year. And to do this, the spokesperson has followed in the president’s footsteps by demanding that the parties put aside their “legitimate party interests on the sidelines.”
Plaja has indicated that the “most immediate” thing after starting 2024 is to approve the accounts “with the groups” with which the Government has been maintaining contacts (PSC, Comuns, Junts and the CUP), to whom he has demanded “will” and “responsibility” so that the negotiations reach a successful conclusion. But the spokesperson did not want to go into the conditions and demands that the parties put forward to agree to negotiate, sometimes contradictory, and she has limited herself to showing the Government’s “optimism” to reach agreements.
Of course, like Aragonès, Plaja has demanded “that the negotiations not be delayed” because “we all know what we are at stake” with the budgets: the need for these very expansive resources to have an impact on the people as soon as possible.
The spokesperson has not given details of how the conversations with the different parties are evolving but has fueled the urgency expressed by the president in an interview on ACN in which he claimed that they could come into force in just one month, something that the PSC, the main partner that the Government has for this company, considers it “impossible.”
Nor does the Government venture to reveal what the calendar for approval of the accounts within the Executive Council should be. Although Aragonès has always indicated his desire for them to be approved by the Government after signing the agreement with the groups, the spokesperson has left it up in the air: “I cannot guarantee that it will end up being like this.” In any case, Plaja has insisted that the agreement should arrive “in the coming weeks and without delay”, and “with the maximum number of matches”.
In another vein, the Government wanted to avoid any comment on the meeting that members of the PP and Junts held in August in Barcelona to explore a possible agreement for the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as published this Monday by La Vanguardia. Plaja has limited himself to pointing out that “we do not comment on party strategies” and has expressed the opinion of the Government regarding the PP’s policies: “They are increasingly closer to the extreme right, they are increasingly getting closer and more similar to she. And their policies are bets on those of the Government, which is left-wing and pro-independence.”
