The PSC, Esquerra Republicana and Junts per Catalunya groups have joined forces to approve the Parliament’s 2024 budgets. The three groups have already voted in favor at a meeting of the expanded Table, in which all groups participate even if they do not count with representatives in the governing body, and achieved approval of the draft accounts for the Chamber. Vox and En Comú Podem voted against, while the CUP and Ciudadanos abstained. The Catalan PP did not participate in the meeting.
On paper, the budget project, which still must be validated by the plenary session, reduces spending by 10.51%, since the total figure amounts to 59.9 million euros, 7 less than in the previous year. In any case, it must be taken into account that a part of the Chamber’s expenses will now be paid directly by the Government of the Generalitat and that the staff remuneration expenses section increases in total by 7.43%.
This is the allocation that the groups receive as a subsidy and expenses for operation and payment of current expenses. Last year it was 12.7 million, and this year it will be 3.7. The 9 million difference will be paid directly by the Catalan Executive through the budgets of the Generalitat, where, in reality, all the money in the Chamber’s accounting comes from. Thus, if those 9 million euros were not paid directly by the Department of Economy and Hisenda, the budget would increase by more than 2 million euros. Parliamentary sources point out that what they have done is regularize the situation given that part of the money that the groups received as a subsidy went to the financing of the parties, as can be seen in the reports. “This financing does not correspond to the Parliament but to the Executive,” these sources argue.
At the end of July, the expanded Parliament Board decided to copy the module system of the Congress of Deputies and what the Lower House pays to the parliamentary groups, a situation that allowed the groups to raise the salary of their advisors or hire more personal, each one as they wanted.
What is still pending is to update the allowances that deputies receive and integrate them into the base salary so that they pay taxes normally. The matter has been in Parliament for years, but there is still no definitive agreement.
On the other hand, the pro-independence groups and the commons have agreed to create a study commission in the Catalan Chamber on the infiltration of agents of the National Police Corps into movements of the sovereignist left. In recent months the weekly La Directa has revealed some cases in Barcelona or Girona.
