Barely five days after election day, the PNV and the PSE have already closed a global agreement to govern together in the provincial councils and in some of the main Basque town councils. The most relevant consequences of this alliance will be that the jeltzales will continue to govern in the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, where EH Bildu prevailed on Sunday, while the socialists will reach the Vitoria-Gasteiz Mayor’s Office 12 years later, where the first force is also the nationalist coalition In both cases they will need the approval of the PP, although both formations have stressed that they will not negotiate investitures with this formation.
The pact, in any case, will be extended to other institutions and municipalities in which these formations are the first or second force. In fact, in the note that they have sent to communicate the alliance, they indicate that it will arrive “wherever possibleâ€.
In other words, Basque nationalists and socialists will rely on three types of situations. In the first place, in those municipalities in which the PNV is the first force and the Socialists are the second or third force, whether or not they reach an absolute majority. In the case of Bilbao, the two formations will have an absolute majority and will be able to govern comfortably (the PNV has been the first force and the PSE the third, surpassed by EH Bildu); In San Sebastián, on the other hand, they do not have a majority, although the Peneuvista candidate, Eneko Goia, may be sworn in as the most voted list to later form a government together with the Socialists, the third force.
Secondly, the pact will work in those municipalities where the Socialists are the first force, in their strongholds of Irun, Eibar, Lasarte or Zumarraga. There, they will govern with the support of the PNV, again reaching an absolute majority or not.
Thirdly, the two formations will agree on those institutions in which neither of the two forces has been first, but their votes add up to be invested, in some cases with the acquiescence of the PP. This is the case of the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, the Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council or the Durango City Council. This aspect of the operation is the one that can pose a greater risk for the PNV, a few weeks before a general election.
In any case, the two formations have indicated that their pact during the last legislature was “highly satisfactory” and have remarked that it will grant “stability” in an electoral map “diverse and fragmented in Euskadi, a reflection of the plurality of Basque society itself”. .
As they have pointed out, this reality, together with the “complex” situation that we are experiencing, “recently out of a pandemic” whose health and social effects “are still kicking in and with a war in Ukraine with consequences in the economic, energy and geopolitical order ” , obliges the parties that aspire to lead the country “to seek agreements that guarantee governability and the stability of the institutions, while respecting this plurality.”
PNV and PSE consider it necessary to reissue, “wherever possible”, this agreement and that, beyond guaranteeing governability, it should be done on “clear bases” that make it possible to face “challenges such as the protection of public services, the fight against inequalities, promoting progress and social justice and responding to the great challenges facing Basque society”, among which they have cited, climate, demographics and adaptation to a new productive economy with new jobs and rights labor.
“These are interrelated and interdependent challenges, which are not different from those of the societies around us but in which the Basque Country, due to its socioeconomic reality, its high capacity for high government and the stability that PSE-EE and PNV bring to institutions, has the capacity to be at the forefront”, they added.
Along with this, he considers it necessary to advance in the “reinforcement” of municipal policies, providing municipalities with sufficient funding that allows them to be “active agents in achieving these objectives, which are also local.”
