The Government has committed to presenting a new regional funding model for communities between January and February next year. This was reported this Monday by the Minister of Finance and Vice President of the Government, María Jesús Montero, to the regional councilors of the sector gathered in the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy (CPFF). The revision of the model has been pending for more than a decade and is one of the main requests of the autonomies, who however have shown themselves skeptical about the announcement, complaining that the minister has not explored the details or convened working groups, and that it would not be the first time that the Government promises a reform of the model which then falls on deaf ears.
“This government wants to reform this financing model and we have made it known to the Treasury advisors,” insisted Montero in the press conference after the meeting. The minister recalled that at the end of 2021 her department took a step in this direction and presented a proposal to reform one of the main variables of the system, the adequate population, which in the end did not move forward. The first vice president explained that this is one of the reasons why the ministry will now present a comprehensive proposal, instead of modifying the model piece by piece.
“No autonomous community will be damaged,” assured the minister. “The regional financing system will have more resources for health, education, social services and addiction,” he added, listing the criteria that will govern the future model. Monero added that it will be applicable to all communities with a common regime, but, citing Catalonia, that this “will not prevent territorial singularities from being taken into account, which will include interterritorial solidarity, the regulatory capacity of communities will be reformed and strengthened and the current differences in financing per adequate inhabitant will be reduced, which today generates large comparative complaints between territories.
The PP councillors, who are the majority – representing 11 communities and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla – fear that the minister’s announcement is a toast to the sun and that any reform proposal presented will be dictated by the requests of the pro-independence parties with which the government has negotiated the single financing of Catalonia. “The independentists who want to leave Spain are the ones who are negotiating the model for the rest of Spain,” said Andalusian Treasury Minister Carolina España as she left the meeting. “Today he says that he will present the complete model. In this sense the balance is positive. But he says nothing, except that he will recognize the singularities and the bilateral treatment, and he has not clarified anything further in this regard”, added his counterpart from Extremadura, Elena Manzano.
Montero also communicated to the communities the deficit objective for the period 2026-2028, equal to 0.1% of GDP for each year, an objective which would increase the spending margin of regional governments by approximately 5,500 million. The proposal received enough votes to move forward, as it only needs the support of the ministry and one other community, but the majority of PP councilors voted against it.
Even before the start of the meeting, the regional councilors of the PP, which governs in 11 of the 15 joint regime autonomies – which also include the Ministry of Finance of the Canary Islands and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla -, had regretted that the Ministry’s appeal had arrived late and inadequately, since they had to design their budgets blindly, without knowing the budget objectives. They also regretted the fact that it is not necessary to go into further debt, but rather to create a new financing system as soon as possible.
The Ministry of Finance has also updated the amount of advance payments for 2026 upwards. These are the resources that the autonomies receive from the advance payment system, based on economic growth and tax collection forecasts. Last July, the department chaired by Montero announced by letter that for this project the regional governments would receive 156,990 million euros, which now amount to 157,731 million, the largest sum in history and 7% higher than this year’s.
The revision was possible thanks to the good dynamics of the economy, as Montero explained in the press conference after the CPFF. Tomorrow, in fact, the Government will update its growth forecasts for this year, from 2.7% to 2.9%. If the liquidation forecast for 2024 is added to the advance figure, the overall financing for communities in 2026 will be 170.3 billion, 7.7% more than the current year
