The doubts of Junts to validate the anti-crisis decree approved by the Government in the last Council of Ministers with the partial extension of the anti-crisis shield, and of Podemos to vote in favor of the one relating to the new unemployment benefit, put the VAT reductions of the taxes at risk. basic foods, electricity and gas and transport aid, as well as the reform of benefits. If the Plenary Session of the Congress of Deputies rejects both norms on Wednesday, the day of the vote, the Executive would be forced to urgently approve new decrees with modifications.
The extraordinary plenary session of the Lower House will address the validation of three royal decree laws with a marked economic content. The first rule to be debated will be that relating to the Recovery Plan to be able to receive a new payment of 10,000 million from European funds, already requested from the Commission.
The second decree that will be submitted for validation is the one that includes, among other things, the unemployment benefit reform, which was approved on December 19. In this rule, the person who puts the vote at risk is Podemos, which yesterday warned that it will vote against because it represents “a significant cut to the pensions of recipients over 52 years of age.”
The third decree is known as the omnibus, which includes the aforementioned tax reductions, in addition to the progressive recovery of the usual rate of the special electricity tax and that of electricity generation, aid for transport and other measures such as the revaluation of 3.8% of contributory pensions, prohibition of evictions of vulnerable families, the expansion of mortgage relief aid or the extension of the social bonus. Its cost is 5,350 million.
Failure to validate the decree would also cause the extension of temporary taxes on energy companies and financial entities to decline, in addition to the solidarity tax on large fortunes. The Government has announced that in the 2024 Budget it will include an “incentive” for decarbonization for energy companies that pay the temporary tax.
Junts has expressed its intention to reject the three decrees because, in its opinion, the application of the amnesty law would be put at risk, powers would be invaded and the “underfinancing” of Catalonia could be aggravated.
The decrees are voted on in their entirety, validated or rejected, and then Congress decides again whether to process them as a bill in order to introduce amendments to the norm. The Government has only lost the validation of a decree since 2018, that of remnants of the town councils, which was repealed.
To achieve this endorsement of the three decrees, it would be necessary to revalidate the majority of the investiture and the composition of the Congress Board, with Junts, or obtain the support or abstention of the PP, a formation that has already criticized the omnibus decree and that rules out support it if it is not modified. In the past, the popular ones have already abstained from decrees on anti-inflation measures. On this occasion, the popular parliamentary group has requested the deflation of personal income tax and that the reduction in food VAT be extended to meat, fish and preserves.
The PSOE still sees room to close an agreement with Junts and save the validation of the decrees. The socialist spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, assured this Sunday that the conversations with the Catalan nationalists are “permanent and discreet” and that they will work “until the last minute” to convince them. The regulations “directly affect the well-being of citizens” and it would not be understood if they did not prosper, López added.
