The Catalan Government has reached an agreement in principle with the Catalan business and trade union organizations to include in the budget of the Generalitat of 2023 some items and provisions considered essential by the social partners. From measures and resources to support reindustrialization and vocational training and expedite administrative procedures to an increase of 8% of the Sufficiency Income Indicator of Catalonia, a theoretical reference figure but with very specific consequences, by automatically dragging the access thresholds and the amount of basic social benefits such as canteen scholarships, aid for social housing, guarantees against energy poverty or the Guaranteed Income of Citizenship.
The President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonestrusts that this social agreement will serve as an additional argument to make the ‘yes’ possible and even more difficult to justify the ‘no’ to their accounts by the essential partners of circumstances necessary for a Government in an undeniable minority in the Parliament can approve the accounts.
Putting this first success on the negotiating table should facilitate the agreement, but it is still insufficient. PSC and ‘commons’ (especially the former, after seeing how their collaboration was loudly shunned from ERC after the break with Junts) demand gestures of openness to negotiation without fuss on the part of the Government. It is positive that a social dialogue table has tangible results, but it is no less necessary that Esquerra assumes the need for a political dialogue table in Catalonia, just as it is between the executives in Barcelona and Madrid, to create the necessary climate of trust and mutual respect. However, the responsibility also falls on the opposition groups. The claim that any agreement be prior to the approval of the draft accounts by the Government, and not after its referral to Parliament, is a formality that should not be an impediment to a greater objective, that of prevent a paralyzing budget extension at a time when the country cannot afford it.
By togetherhis attitude does not fit very well with the fact that the initial preparation of the accounts has been responsibility of a Conselleria d’Economia that was still in their hands. Yes, with his condemnation of the support by ERC and PDECat of the General Budgets, even if they are the ones that have to make viable Generalitat budgets possible. The presentation of a series of conditions that are difficult to accept by the ‘communs’ seems to indicate that Aragonès’ ex-partners would feel more comfortable pointing to ERC for reaching an agreement with socialists and ‘communs’ than assuming commitments with Junqueras’s party with his departure of the Government so raw.
It is nothing new, but it is striking and worrying, which social dialogue easier than political. We have the precedent at the Spanish level: it was already more affordable for Pedro Sánchez to reach meeting points with the social partners around the shock measures in the face of the covid-19 crisis than in the Congress of Deputies. But the need to avoid the unwanted scenario of a 2023 without new budgets should not worry less the parties in a position to reach compromises with the Government than it has mattered to Foment, Pimec, CCOO or UGT. Once again we miss the fact that the philosophy of the social agreement also permeates the political dialogue.