So far, of the major issues regarding the 2024 budgets, the Government only has the accompanying law practically completed and the approval of the spending ceiling: 36,700 million euros, 3,000 million more than in 2023. The pacts politicians with parliamentary groups are not signed, negotiations have only recently begun and the Catalan Executive has not even approved its own accounts, a preliminary step to take them to Parliament for final endorsement. In fact, Patrícia Plaja, spokesperson for the Government, stated yesterday that the ministries are still “outlining” the numbers.
In this situation, and with the new budgets in the pipeline, Pere Aragonès yesterday signed the decree law for the 2023 accounts to be extended from January 1.
The rubric is mandatory and is linked to the approval of another decree to authorize borrowing operations, so that the Generalitat and public entities can face the amortizations due during the 2024 financial year.
The last time the Catalan budget entered into force on the first day of January was 2022. On that occasion, Junts lived in the Palau de la Generalitat with ERC and the Minister of Economy at the time, Jaume Giró, in the ranks post-convergents, was in charge of preparing the numbers.
Those of 2024 are the ones that are progressing more slowly in Aragonès’ term. On December 14 of last year, the president secured the support of the commons and approved the accounts to the Executive Council shortly after, pending an agreement with the PSC that arrived on February 1, 2023.
In any case, Plaja stressed that he expects the extension of the current ones “to last only a few weeks”. The next meeting of the Government Council will be on Wednesday, January 3, so the Government will certainly not approve the accounts before the end of the year. In addition, Parliament’s board of speakers rejected ERC’s proposal to enable the first fortnight of January to, if the case arose, process the accounts.
However, this time the Government wants to approve the accounts internally only when it has the approval of the parties that support the accounts. But so far only the PSC has shown some willingness to study them intensively.
The commons have strengthened their position for the possible approval of the macro project of the leisure complex in Vila-seca (known as Hard Rock), despite the fact that ERC and the Government have reiterated that it is a matter that is still pending technical feasibility reports and which “will not cost Catalan citizens a single euro”. Also, the new pediatric care proposed by Salut and the increase of 6.75% in public transport rates make Jéssica Albiach take a step back. Together and the CUP, a priori, seem more reluctant to the pact.
