The Government guarantees with ERC the Budgets of a legislature

The PSOE Government and United We Can have already secured with their investiture partners the support to carry out their first state budgets, the instrument that guarantees stability for the remainder of the legislature.

The last accounts approved in Spain date from 2018, since then they have had to be extended.

The 155 seats in the coalition plus the "pre-agreement" reached with ERC, which its executive must ratify today, and the support announced by the PNV and Bildu add up to 179 votes, three more than the absolute majority.

And even more accessions are being negotiated.

Citizens agreed on an amendment with the PSOE on Tuesday but reiterated their incompatibility with ERC and Bildu to support the budget.

The last general state budgets were approved in June 2018, a few days before the motion of censure that ended the Government of Mariano Rajoy and that placed Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa.

The accounts of a PP Executive have been extended since then due to the difficulties that different governments have had in obtaining the necessary support in a highly fragmented parliament.

Almost two years ago, the project drafted then by the PSOE with Podemos was boycotted in the process of amendments to the entirety by the right and the Catalan nationalists.

That event precipitated a snap election and caused further political instability.

That landscape seems to have changed radically now.

The state budgets for 2021, which consolidate the rest of the legislature for the first coalition government of the recent democratic stage "are on the right track."

This statement by the head of the Treasury and spokesperson for the Executive, María Jesús Montero, after the Council of Ministers this Tuesday is no longer just a forecast but a certainty.

It is based on the general pacts between the PSOE and United We Can together with other partial agreements with the partners of the motion of censure and the investiture.

The Congress thus lived a frenzied day of negotiations on Tuesday between the usual and sporadic partners of the Executive, each one tried to demonstrate their powers of negotiation and deterrence when it came to achieving achievements for their respective interests, ideological or territorial.

There were agreements, pre-agreements and pacts signed, some apparently incompatible with each other.

ERC, which has 13 deputies in the Chamber, was the last parliamentary group after the PNV and EH Bildu to announce its support for the Budget Law project, but the one that finally shifted the ideological balance of these accounts towards the left and the nationalists against to the option tested by the PSOE towards the center with Citizens.

The decision of Bildu (five deputies), PNV (six) and ERC to accelerate their willingness to support in public and in just 24 hours the budgets has a lot to do with the marking against Ciudadanos, according to direct sources of the negotiation.

"Our urgency to shoot first has been to break Citizens' waist as soon as possible and avoid the pressure that this caused us and the temptations towards the center of the PSOE," admit sources from the leadership of those parties.

The PSOE and Podemos coalition with its 155 seats, plus the votes of the PNV, ERC and EH Bildu, already reaches 179 votes in favor of the budgets, three more than the absolute majority, and they could still add six more with the three of More Country and Compromís, and those of the Regionalist Party of Cantabria, Teruel Existe and Nueva Canarias.

The parliamentary spokesman of the republican formation, Gabriel Rufián, only wanted to anticipate this Tuesday in Congress that his group had reached "a principle of agreement" with the Executive to preserve the formal pronouncement that will take place this Wednesday morning, when a From 9.30 am the ERC executive meets in Barcelona.

Then the ERC leader, Pere Aragonés, and Rufián from Madrid, will ratify the agreement and provide some news to the amendments already closed on Monday at a meeting in the capital between delegations from both parties.

In that appointment, in which members of the Catalan Ministry of Finance, the parliamentary group and the ERC party participated on the one hand, and, on the other, the head of the Ministry, and the top officials of the PSOE in Congress, Adriana Lastra and Rafael Simancas, the four basic points were squared to include the Republican party in the bloc in favor of the budgets.

The most relevant amendment is the one that "will return full autonomy to the Generalitat of Catalonia to manage its expenses," according to ERC.

What Rufián cataloged as "the end of the financial 155 applied by the Government of Mariano Rajoy and the Minister Cristóbal Montoro to Catalonia" and with which he understands that "the protection and abuses of the Ministry of Finance against the Catalan economy are ended" .

The Catalan Government considers its financial independence curtailed since in 2015 the central Executive, then chaired by Rajoy, applied a series of controls to its provisions of funds to prevent them from being used for pro-independence purposes.

These controls on income and expenses were prior to the application of article 155 of the Constitution with which the Catalan executive was intervened after the independence referendum of October 2017. The current central government already lifted some of these restrictions when it came to power two years ago years, but not on spending control.

The ERC spokesperson added to that section of the assignments started in this negotiation the extension of the moratorium on the payment of the self-employed to Social Security until March 2021, one more quarter, and with the commitment to extend it longer.

In Catalonia, Rufián recalled, 98.9% of companies are SMEs and self-employed.

"The tax haven of Madrid"

ERC highlighted that it had managed to get the central executive to support the creation of a bilateral committee to study a "total, fair and progressive tax reform."

And that is where a working group has been included on a more progressive tax for large fortunes and "to end de facto tax dumping and the tax haven set up by the right in the Community of Madrid."

The Catalan republican and independence party has long claimed the same Heritage tax for all of Spain to end and “harmonize” the current differences between territories.

The third claim agreed by ERC consists of the liquidation of the existing debt in the Education scholarships from 2015 to 2020. Rufián stressed that the objective of ERC in this negotiation was "to be useful" rather than to demonstrate its independence.

The Republican leader was cautious not to speak of a final agreement yet, but did not hide that the positions are more than close.

ERC sources admit that in recent days, in addition to negotiating with the government's socialist sector, they had also maintained frequent contacts with the PNV and Bildu, for common interests and to pressure the PSOE and "invalidate Citizens in the equation" of the possible partners.

The PNV, however, manages its own style in this type of negotiation process, in which it has a lot of experience.

His spokesman in the Chamber, Aitor Esteban, also wanted to appear in Congress this Tuesday to formalize his satisfaction with the agreement reached "by horse's finger" by his party and for having incorporated half of his 85 public accounts into the project of the State. amendments raised.

Esteban and the PNV have also held meetings and contacts with various gangs and in fact on Monday he outlined, at 2.30 in the morning and by phone, the pact of the definitive amendment with the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, for that Ministry to facilitate the transfer for urban uses to the San Sebastián City Council of the land now occupied by the Loyola barracks in a city with serious problems and deficiencies due to lack of space to develop.

The City Council will have to give Defense land in another area for the construction of its barracks in exchange.

The pragmatism of the PNV

Pragmatic as always, Esteban listed a series of investments and agreements on wind energy, technology centers and even the abolition of 13 railway level crossings.

But he conceded that before an increasingly fragmented Congress, his work is more complex than ever: "All the negotiations I have been in have been different, with different circumstances, and at each moment you have to know what is important and what is possible" .

What Esteban did not want to acknowledge is that the privileged dialogue with the central governments of the PNV can now be seen to be relegated by the emergence of EH Bildu as another potential partner, at least for some issues, as has been observed with the controversial amendment on the ban of evictions until 2023. A resentment that PNV president Andoni Ortuzar did admit.

All these positions, but especially that of ERC, on Tuesday ignited the spirits of those responsible for Ciudadanos, who tried to maintain a few more hours the unknown of their vote on Thursday of next week in the plenary session in which all parties will have to rule on the outcome of these negotiations on partial amendments to the budget.

The deputy spokesman for Ciudadanos, Edmundo Bal, also appeared to explain that his party had signed a transaction with the PSOE for the creation of the single health card in all of Spain.

Bal did not want to accept the reality of the government's imminent agreement with ERC and challenged that formation to vote on his amendment.

ERC did not show any concern at this location.

Ciudadanos intends to stretch its negotiations to the maximum to present itself as a profitable party at the center of the political board, also thinking as ERC in the next campaign of the Catalan elections on February 14.

But in Ciudadanos they are already beginning to assume that the Government of Pedro Sánchez and Unidas Podemos has taken sides by associating with the PNV, ERC and Bildu and that then they will not be able to find refuge even in abstention and will end up on the side of no with PP, Vox and JuntsxCat.