The king and queens Letizia and Sofía will see their salary increased by 4% | The Crown announces that it will publish contracts over 15,000 euros on its website
Felipe VI will charge this year 269,296 euros gross, divided into twelve monthly installments, 10,369 euros more than in 2022when his State allocation was 258,927 euros.
Queens Letizia and Sofía also see their public remuneration increased by 4 percent compared to last year, so in 2023 their remuneration is 148,105 and 121,186 euros, respectively -in 2022 it was 142,402 and 116,525 euros-.
The Casa del Rey has published on its website the breakdown of this year’s budget, which amounts to 8.43 million euroswhich remains frozen for the third year in a row.
Felipe VI and the two queens are the members of the Royal Family who are assigned, since their father, the King Juan Carlosit was withdrawn in 2020 after discovering his hidden assets abroad and the princess eleanor and the infanta sofia They do not charge any amount from the State.
These rewards have increased by 2.5 percent compared to those in force as of December 31, 2022like those of senior government officials, as specified on the website.
The 538,587 euros reserved for the Royal Family are part of the 4.7 million euros of personnel expenses -4.5 million in 2022-, the largest item in the budget of the King’s House, which represents 56 percent of the total.
The senior officials of the institution add up to an allocation of 849,000 euros.
Current expenses on goods and services have a heading of 2.7 million euros, 0.83 percent more than in 2022, of which 1.8 million are for office supplies, communications, insurance and contracts with service companies and 605,000 euros, for protocol and representative attentions.
The investment chapter drops to 746,000 euros (965,348 last year), an amount that will be applied mainly in the digital transformation plan of the Casa del Rey started in 2019, as indicated on the website.
The contingency fund of the Casa del Rey is frozen at 168,000 euros, since it is set at 2 percent of the budget.
The Constitution establishes that the Head of State disposes each year of “a global amount to support his family and his House and distributes it freely.”
Contracts over 15,000 euros will be published on the web
In addition, the House of the King has announced that will publish on its website the contracts it signs for an amount greater than 15,000 euros and its award process in order to increase transparency on this type of operations.
The Casa del Rey has posted on its website this afternoon the new contracting instructions and those of budgetary procedure and accounting that will apply from this Wednesday, the 15th. They are measures derived from the decree that the Government approved in April of last year with the purpose of reinforcing the exemplarity of the Head of State and its accountability.
One of the novelties is that the principle of publicity is incorporated, for which the institution directed by Felipe VI will have a space on its website called “Contractor Profile” that will collect the information and documents related to its contractual activity to guarantee the transparency and public access. In contracts that exceed 15,000 euros, the tender announcement, the specifications, the award and the contract will be published. The Casa del Rey may publish a notice of prior information to publicize the contracts that it plans to award in the following twelve months.
With regard to minor contracts, each quarter it will report the object, duration, amount of the tender and award, as well as the number of bidders and the identity of the successful bidder. It will not be mandatory to publish contracts of less than 3,500 euros in which the payment system used was that of a fixed cash advance or another similar one. to make the payment.
Another rule that is incorporated is the principle of integrity, which will oblige the high positions and officials of the House of the King to “tTake appropriate measures to fight fraud, favoritism and corruptionand effectively prevent, detect and resolve conflicts of interest that may arise in bidding procedures”.
The conflict of interest will prevent anyone “who directly or indirectly has a financial, economic or personal interest that may appear to compromise their impartiality and independence from participating in the award process.”
The Casa del Rey also establishes the principle of equality and non-discriminationsince it will give “equal and non-discriminatory treatment to economic operators from all the States of the European Economic Area”.
Regarding the instructions on budgetary procedure and accounting, the objective, according to the Palacio de la Zarzuela, is to adjust them “to the techniques and principles of the public sector”, respecting the autonomy that the Constitution recognizes to the king to freely distribute the items that assigned by the state.