The General State Budget for 2025 is already considered lost by the Government and also by the parliamentary partners. Moncloa and the Ministry of Finance have the obligation to keep the expectation open until the last moment, but the climate was pessimistic before last week, and the Junts blow in Congress, by knocking down the spending ceiling and the stability objectives, has confirmed the bad forecasts. There is no political climate to push forward another Budget, and the Government has no choice but to work now on defining the discourse to convince public opinion that this new setback, a consequence of its political and parliamentary weakness, should not be seen as a sign that brings the call for general elections closer.
Last March, the First Vice-President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, announced that the early Catalan elections “altered” the Government’s plans because it clearly changed the political landscape and that was why the Budgets for 2024 could not be presented. Montero explained at the time on Cadena Ser that “they are currently extended and reality clearly indicates that we have to take advantage of all the impressive technical work and the fluid conversations and pre-agreements with the majority of parties, which are an important starting point for the 25th project and to have the best Budgets in our history.”
Just as it was then, and now, barring any surprises, what we will be told by the Government is that it is not a drama to continue with a non-restrictive Budget, at least in terms of spending. Pedro Sánchez can stay in Moncloa without a Budget, but his position of weakness is aggravated to extreme levels. In a context in which, in addition, Junts has withdrawn its support for the Government, and it remains to be seen how far this decision will lead. This withdrawal of support cannot be reversed unless the PSOE facilitates Carles Puigdemont’s access to the Presidency of the Generalitat.
Article 134 of the Constitution provides for the automatic extension of the General State Budget on 1 January if there are no new public accounts by that date. For the 2024 financial year, this was no longer possible due to the call for general elections and the investiture of Sánchez in November 2023. The Budgets must be presented one quarter in advance of the year to which they correspond.
As regards taxes, the Government can modify current taxes by decree law, but if it wants to approve new taxes, it would be necessary to confirm a new specific law. In any case, it would not be the first time that a budget extension is extended to another year. In 2018, the accounts, prepared by the PP, and approved by the PSOE after the motion of censure, were extended for two years, a first extension from 2018 to 2019 and a second in 2019. These budgets were in force until December 31, 2020, something that had never happened before.
In any case, the situation is different from that of 2020, and, if it is confirmed that there is no General State Budget, Moncloa will have a very difficult time putting a damper on the conclusion that it is not in a position to govern the country with its investiture partners. Given this scenario, the Government’s parliamentary partners are those who say that they see the President of the Government’s capacity to continue holding out, at most, until next spring, but no longer. The idea that Sánchez resurrects every time he is buried has already become a kind of mantra, but Puigdemont has the checkmate to the legislature in his hand and there are fewer and fewer survival resources left to a Government with the party of the fugitive ex-president in the opposition and without any incentive to continue supporting the coalition Executive.
The reality is that there is no governing majority, there can be no legislative production, except in exceptional cases where the PP abstains or votes in favour, and, consequently, there can be no solutions to problems as serious as regional financing or immigration. And even more so if one takes into account that the Government also governs against the majority of the autonomous communities.
In this regard, in Sánchez’s round of visits to Catalonia and the Basque Country, there are those who have believed to see a preventive test of his two main electoral granaries in the last general elections within the “just in case” in which politics has been installed for months. The parties move under the slogan that all scenarios are possible, even that of Sánchez surprising with an electoral call in the autumn. The poll figures do not allow him today to maintain control of Moncloa by submitting to a new test at the polls, nor do they allow Alberto Núñez Feijóo to push through a motion of censure. By the way, those who move in the environment of the popular president clarify that Feijóo’s pressure with the demand for an electoral call has nothing to do with censure: “It is not an idea that is in Alberto’s head today.”