The agreement for new regional financing is closed, at least with ERC. This Thursday, Pedro Sánchez received Oriol Junqueras at the Moncloa in the first public meeting that has taken place between the two leaders since the Republican’s release from prison. The photo initials an economic agreement that comes after months of complicated three-way negotiations between the Ministry of Finance, the Government of the Generalitat and the ERC itself.
The pact, as explained by Junqueras, represents a new model of common regional financing for all communities with a common regime. In numbers, it would mean an injection of around 4.7 billion more euros per year for Catalonia, included in the nearly 18,000 in total that will be distributed among all the communities.
In addition to the figures by which the financing would increase, the agreement that is closed with the Ministry of María Jesús Montero includes a whole new distribution calculation, which will be the scheme that governs all the autonomous communities, but of which all the details are not yet known.
The leader of ERC has reported that the new normal will include an ordinality clause, which would mean that the contributions of all the communities to the common fund are limited so that none of them lose positions in the ranking of financing per inhabitant. According to the figures offered by Junqueras, this ordinariness would mean an increase of 12% in the financing of the Generalitat of Catalonia, something that, according to the Republican, will benefit public services.
“It is a good financing model in which no one loses and in which everyone wins,” Junqueras said as he left the Moncloa Palace, although he admitted that this understanding, which Montero has assured will explain in depth this Friday, still has to go through Congress and not all the supports are tied up. In fact, Junts has raised the price in recent days by pointing to the concert as the only model that would be worth it. Junqueras has passed the ball of responsibility to Carles Puigdemont’s court by being convinced that it is a “good agreement.” “Each party will be responsible for what it votes for,” said the ERC leader.
In Moncloa they confirm that Montero will present this Friday the new financing model in which “all territories will receive more transfers to reinforce the Welfare State”, according to government sources, who do not, however, give any details of the system. What they maintain is that it will give “more resources to all the autonomous communities.”
“The progressive Government wants more public health, more public education, more aid to citizens and for that we need better-financed autonomous communities,” these sources point out. The Government knows the complexity of approving a new system that combines the needs of the different autonomous communities, which have different interests even if they are governed by the same party. “If the PP supports these principles, it should support the reform proposal that guarantees more resources for all autonomous communities. It is incompatible to believe in the Welfare State and the State of Autonomies and not support the necessary reform of the model,” the Executive adds.
Personal income tax collection pending
Although ERC and the Government have reached an understanding on the model, Junqueras has stressed that the formula has not yet been unblocked so that Catalonia can collect personal income tax, as was agreed for the investiture of Salvador Illa. “It is an issue that remains pending,” he responded to journalists.
And it is this pending issue that means that ERC is not yet in a position to negotiate the General State Budgets. “For the conditions to be met, an agreement on the collection model is necessary. We are convinced that it is possible for this agreement to be achieved,” said Junqueras, who said that “if there are provinces that are capable of collecting all taxes” he cannot “think of a reason why Catalonia cannot collect one of them.”
The ERC leader, however, has been in favor of having budgets because they are a “useful tool to serve the entire society”, but he believes that it is the PSOE and the rest of the forces that must make a move.
The meeting between Junqueras and Sánchez took place at the request of ERC in the ‘December horribilis’ of the socialists, when the former minister José Luis Ábalos went to prison and the PSOE began to boil due to the accumulation of complaints of harassment as a result of having had in the drawer those that were weighed against the former advisor to the president Paco Salazar. “What we ask is that they adopt the necessary measures to put an end to this type of behavior,” responded Junqueras, who boasted that ERC has never had any case of corruption. “In the Spanish State there are parties that find it very difficult to put an end to corruption,” he added before recalling that during his time in some prisons during the procés trial he mainly encountered “PP militants, all of them accused of corruption.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
