After a year of tug-of-war with Junts, the Government thought that the approval of the tax reform three weeks ago in Congress, for which it managed to gather the support of all its partners, definitively paved the way for the General State Budgets . In fact, in the socialist ranks they still think so today. But the truth is that the optimism to promote these new accounts at the beginning of 2025 has collided this week with the latest blackmail attempt by Carles Puigdemont.
The demand of the Catalan independentists for a question of confidence in the president before sitting down to negotiate adds to Podemos’s warnings. Those from Ione Belarra warn the PSOE that, to have its support, it is necessary to first comply with the pending commitments, in reference to the tax on energy companies.
As elDiario.es has been able to confirm from parliamentary sources, the Executive will activate this Wednesday the negotiation table that Podemos demanded to address the extension of that tax rate on the profits of electricity companies. Although the PNV has withdrawn from that call. “No one spoke with the PNV on November 21 about what was agreed between PSOE and Podemos within the framework of the tax reform and we do not feel obliged to take part in Podemos’s urge to transfer an image to justify its irreversible support for a package fiscal”, point out the Basque nationalists.
This announcement by the PNV late on Tuesday further strains the atmosphere among the Government’s allies. So no one expects that the agreement, if it occurs, will be immediate. Among the parliamentary groups, there is beginning to be a growing conviction that the path to the Budgets will once again become an ordeal for the Executive, which already foresees an exhausting negotiation that could continue for several months.
Regarding Puigdemont, in the PSOE they remain quite calm in relation to his latest threat. In addition to the conviction that they are faced with the same negotiating strategy as always on the part of the former Catalan president, some statements have been added in recent hours that significantly weaken his threat. On the one hand, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, categorically ruled out that his party considers lending its votes to the PP and Vox for a motion of censure against Sánchez. And Turull himself introduces a relevant nuance to his boss’s order: to negotiate the Budgets, he said, the Government must first find “the formula” to comply with pending investments. Formula that would happen, according to the independence leader, through compensation for Catalonia’s debt with the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA).
In Podemos, for their part, they are pressuring the Ministry of Finance to reestablish the tax on energy companies that they agreed with the PSOE to address at the negotiation table that is set up this Wednesday. “If the Government does not comply now, let it not look for us to approve Budgets or to lift the veto of the tax reform when it arrives from the Senate,” warned deputy Javier Sánchez Serna after the Meeting of Spokespersons.
“The refusal of certain partners of the Government that there is no type of tax on energy companies is weighing more on reestablishing that tax, two weeks have been allowed to pass, a precious time to be able to negotiate and now the Government is pointing out with skepticism to the possibility of reestablishing that tax,” added Serna, who also pointed out that, in his opinion, the Table of Parties convened for this Wednesday “not only should have arrived much earlier, but it seems that it arrives with very little margin to the groups to negotiate on that tax on energy companies.”
Two energy taxes in dispute
The rise of Puigdemont and Podemos takes shape this week in a parliamentary fight over two taxes that are closely related to each other, since they tax the same companies: energy companies. The first is the tax on extraordinary profits that María Jesús Montero will try to agree on this Wednesday with all her partners in Congress. A photo that was a demand from Podemos in exchange for supporting the fiscal package approved a few weeks ago in the Lower House and that is now being processed in the Senate.
But this Monday, unexpectedly, another tribute entered the fray. Junts agreed with the PP on a joint amendment to suspend a tax on electricity generation approved in 2013 by the Government of Mariano Rajoy to cover a deficit of more than 30,000 million that the system was dragging. The proposal of the Spanish and Catalan right is to lower said tax from 7% to 0% when there is no tariff deficit that, at the beginning of 2024, was estimated at 7,866 million.
The amendment was approved with the favorable vote of the proponents, plus Vox, ERC and PNV. The Government tried to use its veto power on amendments that involve a reduction in income, but the absence of the PSOE deputy Juan Antonio Lorenzo prevented it. Socialist sources consulted by this newspaper do not hide the deep discomfort of the parliamentary group with Lorenzo, who was asked to explain why he did not attend the Commission of which he is also a member of the Board. According to these same sources, the deputy claimed not to have been aware of the Commission’s call and could not attend because he was on a long weekend outside of Madrid.
As if there were few open fronts lacking, this mistake by the socialist deputy has caused one more headache for the Government, which is rapidly seeking a solution to reverse a legal reform that, if it reaches a plenary session in Congress, will hardly be able to stop and which represents a reduction in collection of about 1,100 million euros annually. From Sumar they have demanded that the PSOE find how to “maintain the tax.”
The first step has already been taken. This Tuesday, the table of the Energy Transition Commission that processes the reform has called off the session scheduled for Thursday to, in theory, approve the presentation and send it to the Plenary Session of Congress. That meeting will no longer take place, which gives the PSOE new margin to find how to dismantle the Junts-PP pact.
One option is, according to parliamentary sources, to cast a “private vote” in the commission itself to withdraw said amendment from the presentation. The problem for the socialists is that they need, yes or yes, for at least ERC and PNV to retract what they voted on Monday. By being out of the presentation, the Government would regain the possibility of vetoing the amendment.
From the Ministry for the Ecological Transition they indicate that the approved amendments are “unrelated to the European transposition” of two EU directives that update the CO2 emission rights regime, “a decisive tool for the decarbonization of the Spanish economy”, and that this transposition “is urgent”, given that the deadline to incorporate them into the Spanish legal system has been “barely seven months”, and the norm has new features that apply from next January 1, such as the application of the Adjustment Mechanism in Frontera (the community CO2 tariff) or the extension of the CO2 emissions trading regime to road transport and buildings.
In the PSOE they do not assume that they can convince their allies to undo the mess, especially when ERC and PNV are involved in their own congressional processes. And another possibility opens up. Different parliamentary sources suggest that the bill in which the amendment has been included be kept in a drawer to never complete its processing and that the Government will resort to the royal decree-law to bring to Congress the text of the European standard that must come into force as soon as possible.
Source: www.eldiario.es
