New twist in the saga surrounding regional financing. The communities governed by the PP have requested to suspend the meeting of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF) scheduled for this Wednesday, in which they are called to vote on the proposed reform of the system, and postpone it “at least until September.” This has been requested in a letter addressed to the head of the Treasury, Arcadi España, arguing that the modus operandi of the ministry “has completely corrupted the proposal process of this new model” and that they were given neither enough time nor sufficient information to analyze it.
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The letter is sent in a tense context. Since the Government presented its reform proposal last January, all communities — except Catalonia — have rejected it for considering that it is born with an original sin: it is the result of a bilateral negotiation between the PSOE and ERC. Another striking detail is that the letter is dated the same day, this Monday, on which the Canary Islands announced that they will support the new Treasury model, thus becoming the second territory to back the initiative and the first to do so that is not governed by the socialists, as the Executive is shared by Coalición Canaria along with the PP and Agrupación Herreña Independiente.
If the ministry does not accept the request and the meeting is held this Wednesday, the proposal will go ahead anyway, despite the expected rejection from the PP communities, which are the majority: 11 regions, in addition to the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. This is due to the same functioning of the CPFF: the Treasury only needs the vote of one community for the initiatives it presents in the body to pass.
The 11 Treasury ministers of the PP and the two representatives from the Ceuta and Melilla branch criticize in the letter that the Treasury proposal has been “agreed with only one party and behind the backs of all the others,” but acknowledge that “there is a widespread consensus among the autonomous communities on the need to reformulate the regional financing system,” which has been outdated for more than a decade. However, they clarify that “the procedure followed to date is far from responding to a true multilateral negotiation mechanism.”
The signatories regret that the proposal brought to the CPFF was not previously analyzed by the Permanent Technical Evaluation Committee (CTPE) and that, when it was sent, the complete information necessary for its analysis was not provided in advance to the communities. “This procedure has completely corrupted the proposal process of this new model, without the untimely call and without the necessary CTPE documentation on the 14th [of July] validating all that was done poorly.”
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In addition to this “fundamental” criticism of the Treasury’s approach, which offers an additional 21 billion to the communities for next year, the regional representatives mention other issues, including the lack of “essential information to thoroughly analyze the proposal.” Although the ministry sent a new draft in recent days, they criticize that “complete and homogeneous simulations that allow verifying the impact of the model” across the entire territory continue not to be provided, as well as other distribution calculations that have been requested without response. Furthermore, they reproach the ministry for not having had enough time to review the complete documentation of the technical committee meeting.
Finally, the PP ministers mention that the lack of budgets — the 2023 accounts are still extended — and new stability targets — the Congress has rejected them twice — “deprives the process of the security and rigor that an agreement of this nature requires,” nor how the reform fits into the budgetary framework of all administrations.
“The signing autonomous communities do not shy away from reforming the financing system; on the contrary, they demand it. But a reform of this magnitude must be addressed with all communities, with complete information and with the necessary time for its study, and it cannot be resolved on premises and deadlines that prevent it,” conclude the regional representatives.