In the days of the old politics, governments risked their future in the approval of budgets. The government or parliamentary pacts revolved around the broad strokes of the public accounts while in the rest of the laws all kinds of dalliances were allowed. The new politics lives permanently convulsed and entertained in any detail of minor importance because, since the crisis of 2008, the budgets are, fundamentally, a European matter. But this year, inflation turns everything upside down. Experts consider that it is unfeasible to manage a two-digit increase in the CPI with the numbers made before the invasion of Ukraine. And, on top of that, Spain has a differential of two points with respect to the euro zone in terms of price increases, so that some specific action must be taken. The context of the EU is contradictory: fiscal rules have been relaxed for another year, but interest rates make debt more expensive and, even if there are no restrictions on the deficit, there will be a limit on the interest that we are able to pay. Otherwise, the pressure of the risk premium will return, which we already know is an enormous discomfort in relations between Madrid and Brussels.
Sanchez looks to the left
Pedro Sánchez reaches the budget folder after taking a Scottish shower during the month of June in which he has felt the cold of the defeat in Andalusia and the heat of the NATO summit that has been a success even for Feijóo. But after the splendor comes the dramatic day-to-day fight against inflation for which it needs to approve budgets. With who? To begin with, the commitment made with Biden forces him to increase defense spending. And his government partners have already said no. With them, he only has one window of opportunity: to increase the deficit so that this higher spending on weapons comes from a net growth in spending, not from a change in items.. If it overcomes that first hurdle, the second would be to recover Esquerra as a parliamentary partner. For this, what happens this July is decisive. The republican leadership decided in Switzerland to give him a new opportunity as long as he makes some more gesture of relaxation on the Pegasus issue and there is some progress at the dialogue table. chances are few. They can try to recover for the legislative agenda the reform of the crime of sedition or delve into some aspects of the repeal of the gag law, but in this way it is already being seen with the law of historical memory that Esquerra has lost sensibility just as it does not have it for the transfer of skills. In addition, the debate in Moncloa is whether reconciliation has to be staged before or after the debate on the State of the Nation. That is, this week or at the end of the month. The first option complicates the dialectic with the PP, the second may be that it arrives late. Attentive to the next movements and the gestures of each other.
Giró also wants a budget
The Minister of Economy, Jaume Giró, has also stated this week that his will is to approve budgets for 2023 and, from the outset, they have not wanted to close any door, including that of the PSC. With Puigdemont out of the presidency of Junts and Laura Borràs weakened, Giró wants to embody that midpoint of pragmatism and radicalism that the formation seeks after its congress and does not want to allow it to happen to him like last year when in the final stretch of the approval of the accounts with the Comuns had to stay in the kitchen due to the outbreaks of activism of his own formation. The Minister knows that, depending on what happens in the European courts, the relations of Junts with socialism can change radically both in Barcelona and in Madrid in the fall, in time to save each other’s accounts and lower the transfers to Esquerra from one and the other. Acquiring that role would definitively open the door to Junts leadership in the government and in future elections he has once declined to participate in the electoral battle in Barcelona with which he had been tempted. Junts begins a new stage on July 17 after the celebration of the second part of its congress in which it seeks to combine these two souls, but the reality is that Jordi Turull’s skill in managing the party apparatus and the opportunity to the opening of an oral trial against Laura Borràs by the TSJC clears the way to recover the space of the old Convergència, coinciding with the slow rehabilitation of Pujol.