The Government will inform the communities on December 11 of the stability objectives to prepare the Budgets

The Government begins to take the first steps to prepare the first major project of the legislature: the General State Budgets for 2024. To this end, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, will meet next Monday, December 11, with the advisors of the autonomous communities branch to inform them of the objectives of the stability objectives that will serve as a reference to prepare the draft accounts. public.

The Fiscal and Financial Policy Council, the forum that brings together the Ministry of Finance with the autonomies, is the one that must issue a report prior to the approval of this path of stability, which must also be taken into account for the preparation of the Budgets of each of the communities.

Given that this fall the central Government has been in office and could not, therefore, prepare a Budget project, autonomies and city councils have already presented their own accounts even without knowing that path of stability or the payments on account that correspond to them. Some, like Madrid, did it with their own estimates or independent entities.. And apart from the objective of stability, it also remains to be known whether Brussels will once again implement fiscal rules for public spending, as it has been announcing for months, and in what percentage.

The Fiscal Policy Council will meet on the same day that the deadline for the management centers of the different ministries to send their proposals for the budget project to the Treasury. The Government wants to take the rule to Congress for processing as soon as possible, but given that there will be no new accounts before December 31, it will have to extend this year's accounts until those for 2024 can be approved.. Government sources want the parliamentary process to be completed in February.

Before thinking about a definitive approval of the Budgets, for which the Executive will need to have the affirmative vote of all its partners – as it is an organic law, it must be passed by an absolute majority -, the Government must approve in the Council of Ministers both the limit of non-financial expenditure – the so-called expenditure ceiling – such as budget stability objectives, following a report from the Fiscal Policy Council, and then sending everything to the Cortes.

This procedure will not be an easy task for the Government in this legislature: the absolute majority of the PP in the Senate could play tricks on it and reject the deficit and debt objectives. However, the Executive insists that they have “legal security” to be able to draw up the public accounts even if the Upper House overturns the path of stability, although they do not specify how.

The last time this happened was in 2018, when the PP rejected in the Upper House the spending ceiling of the Government of Pedro Sánchez for the year 2019.. That time, the Executive decided to use the previous deficit and debt reference to present its budget project, which was finally rejected by Congress.

Now, however, the scenario is more uncertain since, with European fiscal rules suspended since 2020, there are no such fixed objectives for recent past years, although there are indicative references in macroeconomic tables from the previous year and in the budget plans sent to Brussels. , reports Ep.