Just as he said Publicone of the many points that focus the negotiation for a new Government agreement between PSOE and Sumar is the reform of the regional financing system, pending since 2009. It is an objective unfulfilled by the coalition in the last legislature that both parties want prioritize re-forming the government.
Thus, with 12 of the 15 autonomous communities subject to the general financing regime – Euskadi and Navarra have their own financing system – in the hands of the PP, one might think that the popular ones will use the reform as a battering ram against the Government, taking advantage of their important territorial power. . A strategy that is failing because the debate on regional financing opens cracks between the presidents of the PP themselves.
So many, and so evident, that they have already surfaced. This summer, after the general elections and the evident inability of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to gain a parliamentary majority, the acting Finance Minister, Maria Jesus Montero, put the reform of the regional financing system on the table again, within the framework of the PSOE negotiations. And the ‘sides’ in the PP were discovered: while the Valencian government, in the hands of the popular Carlos Mazónwas in favor of an agreement to reform the financing system that included debt forgiveness, the Community of Madrid promised to fight this measure judicially if it was applied.
For Isabel Diaz Ayuso This is “a grievance with the CCAA that make an effort not to go into debt,” according to what he wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter). The arguments against debt forgiveness, with which Madrid, Castilla y León or Galicia align themselves, are, however, stinging in País Valencià, Murcia, the Balearic Islands or Andalusia, also from the PP.
A single consensus: the current system is “bad and outdated”
“This is not a question of parties but of autonomous communities,” up to three popular barons agree in conversation with Public. “The only thing we all agree on is that the current system is bad and outdated,” says one of them.
Because there will not be consensus on the proposal for a new model either. País Valencià, Murcia (the worst stop in 2022), Balearic Islands and Andalusia — “We are the tail block”one of these governments emphasize, are betting on a system that, broadly speaking, prioritizes the population criterion and compensates them for the underfinancing of the last decade.
On the other hand, Galicia and Castilla y León, which also denounce the economic “mistreatment” that the current model entails for their regions, are committed to a system that “adequately weights the extra costs that the dispersion and aging of the population imply in the provision of services.” public services,” say government sources from both regions.
The presidents of the PP do not expect an “easy battle”
In the middle, the Community of Madrid, which all regions see as the great beneficiary of the current financing system, but which also calls for a reform that addresses, where appropriate, population density criteria.
Thus, the regional presidents of the PP assume that the reform of the financing system It won’t be an easy “battle” and they agree that the negotiation “has to be multilateral” – that is, that no autonomous community negotiates with the Government in parallel to the others – and within the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council. “The Government will want to use it to divide us, but we have to be smarter even though each one has interests for their region,” say sources from the Madrid PP.
