The Valencian Government presents the first push to the Treasury by refusing to change its accounts to reduce the deficit
The Valencian Community declares itself in rebellion. It is the first that has openly raised a challenge to the Ministry of Finance. The Government chaired by the popular Carlos Mazón refuses to change its budgets for 2024 to reflect a deficit of 0.1%, which is the limit that the department of María Jesús Montero has asked of the autonomous communities.. Not only that, because the Consell de PP and Vox also refuses to revise downwards the overly optimistic estimate it made of State transfers through the regional financing system.
The Valencian Government approved accounts for 2024 that grow by 4.5% to reach the record figure of 29,732 million euros. The problem that the Valencian Ministry of Finance now finds itself with is that it did so contemplating a deficit of 0.3%, despite the fact that the stability plan sent by the Government of Spain to Brussels set a target of 0.1%. , the limit to which the majority of autonomous governments have adhered. Reducing the deficit would force budget cuts.
“I neither can nor want to,” Mazón stated this Tuesday to make it clear that his Government will not use scissors in what will be its first budgets.. “Pedro Sánchez's cuts are not going to be applied when they come late and badly,” he insisted.. In fact, the Minister of the Treasury, Ruth Merino, has always argued that the accounts had to be done “blindly” due to the lack of information from the Ministry.. Result: the Generalitat estimated that it would receive a total of 15,517 million from the State in payments on account and the settlement of the 2022 financial year, when the reality is that this amount will be reduced to 15,254. That is, 263 million less, as reported by Montero at the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF).
The Ministry does not quantify the cut that could also mean meeting the deficit objective, although according to the autonomous Secretary of Finance, Eusebio Monzó, in practice it will even be above 0.3%, since the real for 2022 was 3.1% and the forecast this year is 1.3%. Hence, Valencia defends an “asymmetric deficit”, taking into account that a good part of its debt (more than 57,000 million) is attributed to the underfinancing generated by the regional financing system that expired in 2014.
In the Generalitat, therefore, they do not even want to hear about having to review accounts from which the 1,300 million that the left-wing tripartite systematically included as a “demanding” item of income have already been deleted, to precisely compensate for the underfinancing of the what the current model addresses. In the case of these fictitious income that Ximo Puig's executive painted, the Ministry always turned a blind eye.
Hence, the Generalitat is confident that the blood will not finally reach the river, and that Montero ends up accepting a greater deficit for Valencia than the rest of the autonomies.. The minister herself has opened the door to a scenario in this sense, although in exchange for other regions compensating with a zero deficit. What step the Generalitat would take in the event that the Ministry does not give in is something that, at the moment, is not verbalized, despite the fact that Valencia claims that no community expressly opposed its asymmetric deficit proposal in the CPFF..
Of course, there is no evidence that, when push came to shove, everyone accepted it.. “The Valencian Community is going to defend a differentiated limit of 0.3%, the same as in the 2023 budget,” Treasury sources insist.. At the moment, Mazón already has the support of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has admitted an exceptional write-off of the Valencian debt because its financial situation is not comparable with that of Catalonia.