“It is impossible”. The PSC, the main partner with whom the Government of the Generalitat is counting on to approve the budgets for 2024 -despite its status as the main opposition party-, rules out that the new accounts can be in force in just one month, as it aims to the presidentPere Aragonès, according to his first statements of the year. His desideratum not only clashes with the state of the negotiations with the political groups involved (the PSC, commons, Junts and the CUP), but also with the deadlines required by parliamentary processing.
This was warned yesterday by the socialist spokesperson in Parliament, Alicia Romero, who placed all the “responsibility” on the Catalan Executive and pointed out, once again, that for her part, before entering into the negotiation of the accounts of 2024, the Government will have to comply with what was agreed in those of 2023, in particular, the Hard Rock projects, the B-40 and the mixed commission (Government-Generalitat) to study the expansion of El Prat airport .
The fact that these demands contradict those of Aragonès’ usual budget partner, the commons, complicates the optimism of the Catalan Executive, who yesterday, after the first meeting of the Executive Council of the year, was “convinced ” of being able to approve budgets despite the pre-electoral context.
For the ERC Executive alone, achieving this would be a balm in the midst of a storm of crises such as the drought, the management of health, education or renewable energies. It would mean approving the third consecutive budgets in Catalonia, something that has not happened for 10 years.
“We are sure that we will be able to approve the budgets for the third consecutive year”, pointed out the spokeswoman Patrícia Plaja, who appeared with the Minister of Business, Roger Torrent, to give an account of the balance of 2023 in the field of employment.
Since 2013, six Catalan budgets have been approved (those of 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2023), five of which were late. But five didn’t even show up, and those in 2016 were rejected for the first time in history. The Government wants to return the situation to the one before the process, when all budgets were approved since 1981, even if it was not always in time and form.
Like Aragonès, Plaja called on the parliamentary groups “not to delay the negotiations” because “we are betting that these resources, very expansive, can have an impact on the people as soon as possible”. To make this possible, he advised the parties to have “will” and “responsibility”, and to park their “legitimate party interests”. And without going into assessing the state of the negotiations, he left up in the air the calendar that the president longs for.
