“We will present a budget bill in the next weeks”. is the response given by President Pere Aragonès in the control session in Parliament on November 23. This was over two weeks ago. A few days before, the ‘councillor’ of Economy and Hisenda, was confident in a interview in El Matí de Catalunya Ràdio in “have them ready as soon as possible & rdquor;. However, for now, the accounts still have not reached Parliament.
This makes the Catalan chamber the only regional parliament that has not yet received the draft budget for next year. This current context of uncertainty contrasts with what happened last year: the Government presented the accounts to beginning of november and managed to pass them on time for the first time in a decade.
From La Rioja to Asturias: two months presenting budgets
The first autonomous government that presented the budgets to parliament was that of La Rioja: they came to the chamber September 28three days before the deadline set by the La Rioja Statute.
The second community was Castilla-La Mancha, whose government registered the accounts to the Cortes on October 13. Between that date and November 11, most showed up of autonomous accounts, specifically twelve. The last two regional governments to do so were that of Murciawho sent them to the Regional Assembly on November 25and that of Asturiaswhich brought them to the General Meeting on December 1st. In total they are 16 regional budgets that are still being processed.
Extremadura, the first community to reject the amendments to the entirety
The times of the legislative procedure vary depending on the regulations of the parliaments, but in all of them there is a process that must be avoided: the discussion of totalitya first vote (in the event that amendments are presented to the entirety) that they have to pass in order to continue their processing.
The first parliament that rejected the amendments in their entirety (which is a first indicator that the accounts may end up being approved) was the Assembly of Extremadura the October 27th. Most of the totality debates took place throughout the month of November. The last one that has done it, just this Friday the 9th, has been the Basque Country, and Asturias has it programmed for the December 23th.
The chambers in which the fewest days have passed from the recording of budgets to the full debate have been the Courts of Aragon and the Regional Assembly of Murcia, with seven days, followed by the nine days of the Assembly of Extremadura. The parliament in which he has spent the most time is that of the Basque Country, with 42 days. In La Rioja they spent 37 days and in Madrid, 35.
On average, 23 days have passed from the entry of the accounts to the chambers to the rejection of the total amendments. Again, the differences are due to the particularities of each camera. In the case of Catalonia, in 2021 thirteen days passed between what Jaume Giró delivered the estimates to Laura Borràs and that the plenary rejected the amendments in their entirety.
Eleven votes throughout Spain in two days
After the appearances in commission, the presentation of amendments to the articles and the preparation of the opinion, the final moment of the processing is the final debate in the plenary session of the chamber, in which the accounts are definitively approved or rejected.
In all communities, the final vote will occur end of december to get the budgets approved before the end of the year and that they can enter into force on January 1. In fact, between Wednesday the 21st and Friday the 23rd of December, before Christmas, eleven regional chambers will issue their final verdict.
The first will be La Rioja, which will do so on December 19, as confirmed to Verificat by the parliament’s press department. For now, the last one will be the General Meeting of the Principality of Asturias, which will be held on December 30, almost over the horn. As of today, the date has not yet been set in Castilla-La Mancha, as confirmed to Verificat by the press office of the Cortes.
15 accounts submitted with more delay
Returning to Catalonia, since 1980 there have been fifteen occasions in which the Catalan executive has brought the accounts to the Parliament beyond December 11. The last time was precisely for the 2020 budgets, which entered the chamber on January 29.
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six of these times They were in a context in which elections were held in the last quarter of the year and, therefore, the Government was in office.
Since the recovery of democracy, there have been six occasions in which the Government, constituted and fully functioning, has brought to the Parliament some budgets beyond the day of January 1. And five were in the 20th century.