The Canary Islands seek to strengthen the current financial record of the islands in the 2023 State Budgets
The Canarian Vice President, Román Rodríguez, and the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, at the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council held in July. /
open negotiation
The objective is that the 2022 accounts mark the limit "below" and improvements related to the update of the REF are incorporated
The Minister of Finance,
Maria Jesus Monterowill defend on Thursday in Congress the non-financial spending limit -known colloquially as the spending ceiling- for next year, which is the step prior to processing the
State's general budgets (PGE) of 2023.
From then on and until Montero takes the bill to the Lower House, at the end of September or in the first days of October, the Government is going to open a
contact rounds with the other political forces to gather support and carry out the Budgets with a comfortable majority.
For the Canary Islands this year there is a circumstance that can make a difference: NC, training with which the Government has agreed
island upgrades in the two previous budgets, -2021 and 2022- it no longer has a presence in Congress since Pedro Quevedo gave up his seat to María Fernández (CC) in July in compliance with his electoral agreement.
The Government has advanced its intention to include CC, which now has two seats, in the round of contacts, but it will be difficult for it to agree to negotiate with them an increase in
canary games that are included in the bill, unless their two votes are essential to approve next year's accounts.
Although in the pre-election year it is foreseeable that the parties that make up the investiture bloc may threaten to withdraw their support from the Government, even that some of them distance themselves, in Moncloa they are convinced that they will maintain a
similar majority to the one that allowed them to carry out the PGE_in the two previous years, and a priori they do not show special willingness to make concessions for which CC can take credit.
Therefore, the scope of the
financial sheet of the islands in the 2023 Budgets will be subject to the
direct contacts between the Government of the Canary Islands and the state.
In this scenario, the Canarian Executive has set itself the goal that the current budget for 2022, which they consider "historic" for the archipelago,
mark the limit "below" in the new accounts, and that improvements related to the
REF updatein addition to consolidating items in different areas such as immigration or poverty, and programs related to infrastructure, tourism modernization and the energy model, in line with the measures approved by the Council of Ministers.
Apart from the direct dialogue between governments, the Canarian deputies of the socialist parliamentary group in Congress intend to carry out a task of
interlocution with the Ministry of Finance, especially when incorporating
possible amendments to the bill. The priority in this sense is that everything that has to do with the REF and the Statute of Autonomy be respected.
In any case, the regional Executive seeks to tie up the large figures of the Canarian file before the 2023 PGE bill reaches Congress, because modifying it later through amendments is quite
more complicated since it implies subtracting resources from other budget items.
For its part, CC maintains
"fully available" to negotiate with the Government its support for state accounts, on the condition that these are adjusted "to strict compliance with the REF" and reflect the recovery of items linked to
bilateral agreements of cooperation that have been disappearing from the Budgets, such as hydraulic works or educational infrastructure.
