The Ministry of Finance proposed this Monday to the communities a deficit target of 0.1% of GDP for each year between 2026 and 2028, according to sources close to the technical meeting taking place within the framework of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council, the body that brings together the Ministry of Finance and regional sector councilors to discuss issues relating to regional accounts. This objective increases the spending margin of regional governments by around 5.5 billion, according to the same sources, but does not satisfy the requests of the PP communities, who are the majority, and who ask to give priority to a complete reform of the financing system.
The Ministry of Finance invited the communities to communicate the deficit and debt objectives for the next three years (2026-2028) and the maximum spending growth limit, two essential coordinates both for the planning of the General State Budgets and for the preparation of the community accounts. But the agenda does not include deepening the reform of the regional financing system, which has been pending for over a decade and which the regional barons have been insisting on for some time.
The Treasury has included a debate on the financing system on the agenda, but sources in Montero’s department anticipate that a new model closed in all its aspects will not be presented, but a dialogue will open on the matter. The Government had already mentioned, at the end of 2021, in the last legislature, changing the existing model. He then presented a proposal to reform the correct population, one of the main variables for establishing the distribution of funds injected into the autonomies and which is based on the calculation of the real population weighted with demographic and geographical variables.
The government has failed to approve the deficit path in recent years – and consequently the budgets, which have been extended from 2023 – because it did not get the necessary support in Congress. The latest rejection came from Junts, who distanced himself from the investiture pact and threatens to veto the budget targets again when they reach the House.
“We are faced with a situation of paralysis,” lamented the Finance Minister of the Valencian Community (PP), Ruth Merino, shortly before attending the meeting. “In the Government of Asturias we hope that the meeting will take place within the framework of loyalty and institutional respect,” said his Asturian counterpart, Guillermo Peláez (PSOE). “The preparation of the spending rule is important for the configuration of the budget and that is why we ask that it be implemented.”
