Belarra links Budgets to regulating rents, the electricity market and raising taxes on the Ibex

"In the coming months, the Government will risk its re-election," Belarra assured in the initial speech before the highest body of the party between assemblies. For the PSOE and United We Can to revalidate the coalition Executive in the next general elections, scheduled for the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024, "the Government has to deploy an ambitious social and democratic deepening agenda that allows it to respond successfully to what that the citizenship of our country is claiming us ", added the minister.

In Podemos they believe that from next year Spanish politics will enter electoral mode, with the possibility of several advances in certain autonomous communities, especially Andalusia, and the need to start greasing the machinery before the municipal and regional ones in May 2023 For Belarra, the 2022 Budgets can be a good instrument to advance the policies that, he says, are demanded by the progressive bases of both parties and of the parliamentary majority that supports the Government. "Unidos Podemos should aspire not to a recovery that will take us to the point where we were before the pandemic began, but to a reconstruction of our country on new foundations that allows us to incorporate the lessons of this hard year and a half and build a new common country project based on social justice, sustainability, feminism, democratic strengthening and sovereignty, "Belarra explained to the leaders of the party she leads.

"We have the opportunity and the duty to build the new country," he continued, "hand in hand with mothers who raise alone, young people, women, precarious workers, the elderly, children, of migrants or in a situation of dependency ".

Belarra has acknowledged that there is "a constant tension" with the majority partner of the coalition, the PSOE, which at times has leaned on behalf of United We Can. "Sometimes we do not achieve all the progress we want," he acknowledged, to congratulate himself on measures "that would not be explained" without his presence, "such as the social shield, the ERTE, the increase in the minimum interprofessional wage, the law on sexual freedoms. , the prohibition of the advertising of the betting houses or the reduction of the profits of the electricity companies ".

Precisely to this last measure, still in parliamentary proceedings, they blame Podemos for the unstoppable rise in the price of electricity in the wholesale market. "You just have to look at the war that the electricity companies have declared to the first government that has daring to touch his' benefits fallen from the sky", he assured this Friday.

Some Budgets for the "reconstruction"

Advancing in the intervention of the electricity market will be, precisely, one of the central elements in the negotiation of the General Budgets within the Executive. An agreement that "should contemplate effective measures to regulate the electricity market and prohibit cuts in basic supplies", something that United We can already raised in April to the third vice president, Teresa Ribera, and that now the PSOE wants to raise, but linked to the minimum living income.

For Belarra, "you cannot lower the price of electricity without touching the benefits of the electricity oligopoly." In other words, we must go beyond reducing the impact of taxes on the bill, which also has negative effects on the State's collection and, therefore, on the money available to address social programs.

The Minister of Social Rights added: "Nor can rent prices be regulated without the large landlords ceasing to do business with the right to housing." This is the other great open battle within the Executive, since the beginning of the legislature, but especially after the negotiation of the current General Budgets. The PSOE and Unidos Podemos agreed to close the state housing law in early 2021 and include "containment mechanisms and eventually lower prices." Almost a year after that pact, the law is still stuck in the face of the socialist refusal to cap rents in stressed areas and bet on the tax benefits for landlords lower rent.

On this specific point, which Belarra also negotiates directly with the Ministry of Transportation led by Raquel Sánchez, the secretary general of Podemos has indicated that "it would not be logical to approach this negotiation without the agreements closed last year already being a reality."

The third point that Belarra has indicated that should be included in the negotiation of the Budgets is that of "a fair tax reform" that allows Spain to approach "the European average in collection." The minister has insisted on a measure that already includes the agreement of the coalition government signed by Pedro Sánchez and the former vice president Pablo Iglesias: a minimum effective rate of 15% for Corporation Tax paid by large companies to contribute "at least to the public coffers as well as to the employed workers ".

"A fair tax reform should also include the elimination of the pink tax [es decir, el IVA vinculado a productos de higiene femenina] and the reduction of the VAT of sectors as hit as the hairdressers ", has concluded.

Monarchy and CGPJ, against democracy

The secretary general of Podemos has also addressed in her open speech "the elephant in the room" which is, in her opinion, the existence of "two institutions of the State" that "are calling into question the very rules of democracy, causing serious damage. " They are, according to Ione Belarra, the Monarchy and the General Council of the Judiciary, which "has been pending for more than two and a half years the renewal required by our Constitution."

"Why doesn't Lesmes resign if he is so worried? Why do they continue to make key appointments in the judiciary, always associated with the Popular Party?" Party that he has accused of being "permanently out of the law."

As for the monarchy, Belarra has said that "the successive data on the affairs of the king emeritus make his flight increasingly unsustainable" and place the institution "in a situation impossible for social questioning." "It has become clear that the former head of state used his position to do business and not to defend the interests of Spain. King Juan Carlos must be held accountable to justice so that Spain can tell itself that indeed we are all equal before the law, and has to assume political responsibilities before the citizenry by responding to the Congress of Deputies, "he has settled.