As they did last year, the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and the Spanish government have taken their budget talks to the deadline, with contacts at all levels. And the Catalan party have taken the same decision as in 2021: they will not vote an "amendment in the entirety", the formal name for a decision to reject the entire budget at the first vote, which would send the Pedro Sánchez executive back to the drawing board. The announcement came via a press statement, as no specific deal has yet been closed and they are indeed "far away" from one. But at ERC headquarters, they want to give a chance to the negotiation that is underway. Thus, together with the PDeCAT, EH Bildu and the PNB, Pedro Sánchez can see a viable path to the parliamentary processing - not yet the passing - of what would be the third annual budget of his government. The deadline for registering amendments in the entirety ended this Friday at two in the afternoon. Thus, these will be rejected in the debate that will take place on Wednesday and Thursday next week in the Congress of Deputies. The focus will also be on the Catalan Parliament, where the Pere Aragonès government does not yet have the numbers to push forward its Catalan budget.
They did have a draft of the decision to reject the Spanish budget - and had even made two versions - but, half an hour before the deadline in Congress, ERC decide to throw those into the waste paper bin. According to its statement, the decision seeks to "give room and contribute to generating the conditions that allow the ongoing negotiations to remain open, fully aware of the serious context of the economic and social crisis that needs to be addressed". Nevertheless, as they have repeated over the last few days, the Republicans are still "very far away" from being able to actually vote in favour of the budget. They assert that the accounts "have a wide margin for improvement" and consider it "essential that all actors contribute to generating the necessary conditions of confidence in order to keep the ongoing negotiations alive, with the aim of being able to reach agreements".
With this decision, added to the decisions by their fellow Catalans in the PDeCAT, and the two Basque parties, the PNB and EH Bildu, to stop short of throwing the whole budget out of Congress, Pedro Sánchez has secured a comfortable majority (187 votes of the 350 seats) to pass the first parliamentary test of the budget process. After that it's committee hearings, and a return to plenary to be validated in a final vote on November 24th. The position adopted by ERC contrasts once again with that of the other pro-independence parties, former partner Junts, and the CUP, which have decided to register amendments in the entirety - joining those and the three parties of the right - the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox. ERC, with its 13 seats in Congress, has facilitated the passing of the last two Spanish budgets.
What changes is ERC seeking?
There are three nuclear issues that ERC is asking for. The first, for the budget to have a stronger social ambition. The Catalan party sets a clear example of why that is not true at present: all the extraordinary resources that are proposed for defence spending could be allocated to measures for rent relief or for financing of autonomous communities and municipalities. Or a much deeper tax reform than the one presented could be included. The second issue is compliance with agreements made in the past. The non-compliance is particularly evident in the low investment figures in Catalonia, with only 16% of proposed spending having been executed during the first half of the year, while in Madrid more than half of the budgeted sum had already been spent. But they also put an essential issue on the table: political conflict between Catalonia and the state. Specifically, the focus is on advancing the de-judicialization, as agreed at the July meeting of the dialogue table, already five months ago. ERC points out that this does not necessarily have to begin with the reform of the crime of sedition in the Penal Code, despite the fact that this proposal hangs over the subject. In fact, the Republicans' statement deliberately omits this in order to be able to address the issue without the noise.
Meanwhile, in a press conference before the ERC statement was made public, the spokesperson for the Spanish government, Isabel Rodríguez, affirmed that the "priority" at the moment is the protection of the "middle and lower classes" through the budget . The Socialist politician added that they will be able to talk "later, at other times, about other things", such as a hypothetical reform of the crime of sedition in the Penal Code.