Next year Spain will spend more than agreed with Brussels on the fiscal adjustment path. It still has margin, but, having made the calculations, the European Commission warns that “it risks not being able to reach the maximum recommended growth in spending in 2026”. The European Executive cannot say much more because the Government has not yet sent the draft budget, which it intends to present in February next year, and therefore there is no in-depth analysis of the accounts as in previous years.
Together with Belgium, Spain is the only country that has not yet sent its public finance programs for next year. Therefore, the conclusions drawn by the Commission are based on the calculations of the evolution of the expenditure carried out and on the macroeconomic forecasts presented a week ago. But this is not enough, for example, to know whether EU technicians believe the fiscal situation is restrictive or expansionary.
On the other hand, the Commission also concluded that Spain is capable of exiting the financial surveillance program it has been under since it requested financial bailout in 2012. Spain has already paid a good part of the loan requested 13 years ago to save the banks, 41.3 billion euros. This makes the EU Executive believe that it can become the first country saved from the financial crisis that can emerge from this program.
