Increased cost of gasoline and electricity if the anti-crisis plan declines
A woman fills gasoline at a station in Burgos. /
Neither citizens nor gas stations will have to return the aid for this month of April, but they will stop receiving them from Friday
The Council of Ministers approved a month ago the royal decree-law of
measures to mitigate the economic effects of the war Ukraine, with fuel subsidies or the extension of the VAT reduction on electricity bills. Nothing foreshadowed then that this decree would be hanging by a thread at the time of its validation in Congress after some government partners have quarantined their votes pending further explanations for the 'Pegasus case' of espionage.
The consequences of the parliamentary rejection of the anti-crisis plan will be direct for the citizen: this same Friday the bonus of 20 cents per liter of fuel at gas stations would cease to apply, the surcharges on the electricity bill would be recomposed to raise them as they were before March 31 and homeowners will be able to raise the CPI for their tenants without the 2% cap included in the plan, among other measures.
Government sources explain that this will not imply that the bonus money has to be returned from April 1, but it does mean that all this battery of aid measures that came into force almost a month ago would cease to be applied this Friday. In other words, neither the citizens nor the gas stations -in the case of the fuel bonus- would have to face any payment for having received this aid during the month of April, but they would stop injecting the subsidy immediately. In addition, they confirm that the only plan managed by the Government is that the royal decree go ahead and that for this reason they are not working on any emergency plan to solve it. The Executive does not consider any other scenario, they recognize from the Ministry of Finance.
To carry out the anti-crisis plan
the Government needs 172 supports, but at the moment it only has 166: PSOE (120), United We Can (33), PNV (6), PDeCAT (4), Más País (2) and Compromís (1). According to their calculations, they will reach 172, adding formations such as the BNG, Canarian Coalition, Nueva Canarias, PRC and Teruel Exists, as well as the unassigned Meri Pita, with one deputy each. And since a simple majority is enough, they could carry out the decree if sovereignists and the PP abstain instead of voting against it. But at the moment everything is still up in the air and the accounts are very tight.
And although the rise in the price of gasoline and the electricity bill are possibly the consequences that Spaniards would notice the most at first, there are many other measures that will decline this Friday if the decree does not go ahead. This is the case of the 2% cap on rents that are subject to revision with the CPI until June 30, the 15% rise in the amount of the minimum vital income, the extension of the electricity social bond to 600,000 more families, the 362 million destined to the agricultural sector or the 68 million for the fishing sector.
