If the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, a month ago described the proposal for ERC’s own financing for Catalonia as an “electoral pamphlet that discredits the institutions”, today it was Pere Aragonès’ turn to disregard the one announced by the post-convergents. The president He has called it “outlandish”, “unviable” and “improvised”. So much so that he has accused JxCat of “poorly copying” the idea of ??the Republicans.
Aragonès has once again detailed the own financing that he demands this afternoon in a media address, together with the vice president of the Government, Laura Vilagrà, and the Minister of Economy, Natàlia Mas. The financing initiative that Esquerra puts on the table is based on Catalonia collecting all taxes from its territory, and then transferring money to the State for the investments it executes and establishing a solidarity quota that would disappear over the years. He has contrasted it with Junts’ approach to reversing the fiscal deficit – calculated by the Generalitat at 22,000 million euros -, which is also committed to the collection of all taxes, but proposes reducing the debt of the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA). all budgeted investments that are not executed.
It falls short, according to Aragonès: “In recent years this non-execution amounts to 5,000 million euros, and everyone knows that 5,000 million euros is less than 15,000 million euros, which is what ERC has agreed to condone the FLA,” has argued. Therefore, in the opinion of the Republican, with the Junts Catalunya proposal he would lose 10,000 million euros.
This is why Aragonès has considered that Junts demonstrates that “there is no preparation” or “rigor.” “Either they have not looked at the numbers, or on this occasion, going after the Republican Left proposals, they have copied them badly,” he stated.
The ERC candidate for the May 12 elections has also not left in a good place Salvador Illa’s proposal to rescue the joint State-Generalitat tax consortium provided for in the 2006 Statute to collect taxes. “He says that they are going to do what they did not do when they had all the power,” Aragonès lamented, referring to the period between 2004 and 2010, when the socialists governed the Moncloa and the Generalitat.
For the president, Illa’s idea does not resolve the situation, because “the important thing is that Catalonia is the one who collects and decides on the resources that citizens appropriate to the public treasury.” “It is the least ambitious, the least concrete,” he highlighted. , which is why he has assured that it is the one that Pedro Sánchez’s Government likes the most.
According to Aragonès, Illa as president would negotiate with the Government for financing as a “subject.” Only ERC, in its opinion, would do it face to face with the State. And he denies any possibility of negotiating together with all the other autonomous communities, as Pedro Sánchez has always suggested: “Catalonia’s resources (..) do not have to be negotiated at a table where we will have Ayuso’s PP playing against each other, this “It is not the way.” “Nor watered-down coffee for everyone, nor measures taken quickly and hastily that would end up making us worse off than we are now,” he concluded.
