All posts by Luis Moreno

Moreno Luis - is a business and economics reporter based in Barcelona. Prior to joining the BNE24 he was economics editor of the BBC Spaine and worked as an economics and political reporter for Murcia Tuday.

The debt persecutes all the autonomies but Catalonia already accumulates 85,000 million euros, the largest in all of Spain

The search for support by the PSOE to support a future investiture of Pedro Sánchez as President of the Government has revived the debate on regional financing. This is a matter repeatedly claimed by the nationalist parties of Catalonia, decisive after 23-J for the formation of government. The community chaired by Pere Aragonès is the one with the highest volume of public debt, although no region escapes debt.

According to data from the Bank of Spain —referring to the first quarter of 2023—, Catalonia is the autonomous community that accumulates the highest public debt. The amount amounts to 85,456 million euros, which represents 33% of the Catalan GDP. Measured over the total wealth of the region, the proportion of public debt of the Valencian Community exceeds that of its neighboring community, since it amounts to 43.7% of GDP, standing at 55,439 million euros.

These two communities are the ones that have traditionally been most critical of the regional financing system, which is why the Catalan forces have introduced the debate on the matter in the negotiations to form a government. In fact, the day after the elections on July 23, ERC already included among its conditions to support an investiture by Pedro Sánchez addressing the fiscal deficit, a demand that the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, repeated this Tuesday.

Despite being the most indebted, Catalonia is the community that allocates the most resources to social spending and the second that invests the most money in education and health. In total, these items concentrate 59.3% of the regional budget for 2023. However, looking back, the Generalitat's budget management has been dotted with convictions for embezzlement of leaders such as Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Dolors Bassa, for the illicit use of public funds during the process.

a shared problem

Public debt is not only a problem in Catalonia, but is shared by all communities. Catalonia and the Valencian Community are the only ones where the amount owed exceeds the barrier of 50,000 million euros, although also in Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia the debt exceeds 30% of the regional GDP, with 15,574 million and 11,506 million euros respectively. In addition, in half a dozen communities the ratio of debt to regional wealth is between 20% and 26% of GDP. This is the case of the Balearic Islands (26.1%), Extremadura (22.7%), Cantabria (21.6%), Aragón (21.3%), Andalucía (20.3%) and Castilla y León (20, 3%).

The regions in which the public debt is less bulky are La Rioja, Navarra, Cantabria and Asturias, with 1,652, 3,102, 3,375 and 4,212 million euros respectively. Beyond the total amount, the measurement of debt as a percentage of GDP better reflects the ability of the community in question to face that amount. For example, both the Basque Country and Murcia are close to 11,500 million euros in public debt, a volume that in the first case represents 14.1% of Basque GDP and, in the second, 31.7% of Murcia's GDP.

Thus, the communities with the lowest debt over GDP are Navarra (13.5%), the Basque Country (14.1%), the Community of Madrid (14.2%) and the Canary Islands (14.9%).. According to the forecasts of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), these regions will remain at the tail end of indebtedness throughout 2023, since the fiscal supervisor expects all of them to make progress in cleaning up their public finances until they reduce the debt for below 13% of GDP. When comparing the autonomous communities, it must be taken into account that the Basque Country and Navarra have a special financing regime, in which they receive a pre-fixed amount from the State, while the rest of the communities receive a proportional part of the tax collection , compensated with other additional transfers.

Public deficit

Beyond the debt, Catalonia is also the community with the largest public deficit, according to the latest data from the General State Intervention (IGAE), referring to the month of May. The Catalan accounts present a mismatch of 1,380 million euros. However, the region chaired by Aragónès is the second in which the most wealth is produced, only behind Madrid, so that said deficit barely represents 0.52% of GDP.

There are six autonomous communities that exceed the deficit level of Catalonia. At the head are the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Extremadura, where the indicator stands at 1.52%, 0.88% and 0.92% of GDP respectively. In the Valencian Community, Navarra and Castilla-La Mancha, the deficit also exceeds 0.5% of GDP, with budget imbalances of 1,039, 185 and 302 million euros respectively.

For its part, the public deficit is below 0.5% of GDP in the Community of Madrid (-0.47%), Cantabria (-0.40%), Aragón (-0.32%), Galicia (-0.3%), the Canary Islands (-0.26%), Castilla y León (-0.18%), La Rioja (-0.16%) and Andalusia (-0.14%). Only the Basque Country and Asturias closed the month of May with a surplus, an achievement that AIReF expects that the Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Galicia and Navarra will also achieve throughout the year.

The first plane carrying 262 civilians evacuated from Niger lands in Paris

The first French plane with evacuees from Niger arrived at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at dawn on Wednesday with 262 people on board, including 12 babies.

The plane, an Airbus A330, is the first to arrive of the three that France sent to Niger on Tuesday at the start of the evacuation of French and European citizens who want to leave the African country after last week's military coup. .

The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, had previously indicated that almost all the evacuees on this first flight are French, and other official sources detailed that there were also some Portuguese, Belgian, Nigerien and Lebanese.

In Niger, a former French colony, some 600 French citizens have expressed their desire to leave the country after the military coup that on Wednesday of last week overthrew the constitutional president, Mohamed Bazoum.

In addition, citizens of several European countries have also expressed their desire to be evacuated, the French Foreign Ministry said.

The evacuation operation will continue as long as there is a flow of people who wish to leave, be they French, European or other nationalities with the right to enter France, sources from the military General Staff told the press on Tuesday.

Instead, they assured that the departure of the approximately 1,500 French soldiers who are currently stationed in Niger to support that country in the fight against jihadist terrorism “is not planned.”

The French government decided to evacuate after the violent demonstration last Sunday in front of the French embassy in Niamey, with the aim of guaranteeing the safety of its citizens given the lack of control of the situation by the military coup leaders.

However, the sources assured that “there are no French soldiers on the streets” of Nyamey and the evacuees arrive at the airport “by their own means”.. The Crisis Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has organized, together with the Red Cross, a reception system for evacuees, with temporary shelters for those who may need them.

Trump could run for office if convicted, but there is another hurdle in his quest to return to the White House

Donald Trump (2017-2021) has been indicted this Tuesday by a Washington grand jury on four charges for allegedly trying to reverse the result of the November 2020 elections and going to the extreme of encouraging the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 .

It is the third charge after the criminal charges for the case of Stormy Daniels, the porn actress whose silence he allegedly tried to buy, and the most serious charge so far for taking, hiding and not wanting to return classified documents that should never have left the White House.

However, this judicial siege does not legally affect his career towards the White House. In the United States, the country of freedoms, there is a history of other politicians who remained at the forefront of politics despite being convicted and being in prison.

In 1920 the candidate for the White House, the socialist Eugene Debs, ran for office after being convicted of sedition in 1918 for protesting US involvement.. in World War I and polled nearly a million votes while in an Atlanta jail.

Trump could even return to the White House despite being convicted. Again, there are precedents for members of the US Congress who have served parts of their term after being convicted of a federal crime like James Traficant (1985-2002), of Ohio, who was prosecuted for using campaign funds for personal use.

The cost of paying legal bills

What can affect the ex-president's desire to return to Washington is the economic cost of his defense. Trump's political operation is already feeling the weight of the millionaire payments to lawyers, according to US media.

Trump has raised more than $53 million since early 2023, the period when his two criminal indictments in Florida and New York skyrocketed fundraising.

Trump's network of political committees spent an estimated $25 million in legal fees, according to information released this week.. But according to a source who insisted on anonymity to discuss the matter with the press, the figure is considerably higher: $40 million this year alone.

The main beneficiaries have represented Trump and his allies in a series of investigations. Attorney Alina Habba, a Trump legal spokeswoman who worked on the civil sexual assault lawsuit brought by writer E Jean Carroll, has collected $3.5 million for her firm since 2022, records show.

The law firm of Evan Corcoran, attorney in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, has raised $3.4 million. Entities set up by Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White House ethics lawyer who advised figures from Trump world in the House investigation into the January 6 attack, have received $3.1 million, according to the records.

If the analysis of campaign finance reports goes back further, Trump's political committees have paid out at least $59.2 million to more than 100 lawyers and law firms since January 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed at the UN headquarters.

So while Trump dominates the Republican primary field, a lack of cash could complicate his bid for the White House.. To pay their legal bills, Trump allies are launching a new fundraising effort. The Patriot Legal Defense Fund, as it is called, is intended to defray the costs of those who “defend themselves against legal action arising from the involvement of an individual or group in the political process,” according to a filing. done last month.

The White House has opted this Tuesday for silence before the imputation of the former president of the United States Donald Trump for his alleged attempt to revoke the result of the 2020 elections, an announcement that has caught the current president, Joe Biden, on vacation in the beach.

A government spokesman, Ian Sams, has declined to comment on the accusation of Trump.

“We refer them to the Justice Department, which is conducting its criminal investigation independently,” Sams said, quoted by CNN.

The White House often avoids commenting on investigations and prosecutions to defend the Justice Department's independence and avoid being accused of political interference.

Biden's vacation

As the grand jury's indictment of Trump was unsealed in Washington, DC, Biden, who is in Delaware this week for vacation, dined with first lady Jill Biden at Matt's Fish Camp Lewes, on Lewes Beach that state.

The place is near Rehoboth Beach, where the president has one of his private residences and is spending these days off. This morning Biden was out for a bike ride.

Republicans divided over impeachment

Republicans have been divided over the new indictment this Tuesday of former US President Donald Trump.

Mike Pence, formerly Trump's vice president and currently one of his rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination, has suggested that the allegations should disqualify the former president from the party's primaries.

In a statement collected by The Washington Post newspaper, Pence assured that “anyone who puts himself before the Constitution should never be president.”

In the same sense, the also Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson, former governor of Arkansas, has asked Trump to resign from his campaign for his “moral responsibility” in the attack on the Capitol, in which he tried to stop the confirmation of the electoral victory. of the current president, Joe Biden.

Criticism of the Department of Justice

Very different has been the tone and message of McCarthy, leader of the Lower House, who criticized the “double standards” of the Justice Department for impeaching him. “Just yesterday a new poll showed that President Trump is hands down Biden's main political opponent.. All in USA. they could see what was going to happen next,” McCarthy wrote on the social network X (Twitter).

For his part, Trump's main opponent to win the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential elections and current Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, refused to explicitly refer to the former president, assuring that he has not read the accusation.

Trump supporters accuse the special counsel of being the "enforcer" of the Biden family

The group that promotes Donald Trump's candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections accused special prosecutor Jack Smith on Tuesday, who announced charges against the former president on Tuesday, of being “the executor of the criminal family” of US President Joe Biden. .

“The good news is that President Trump is undeterred and his unprecedented America First movement will take him back to the White House, where he will dismantle the Deep State and bring the Biden crime family to justice,” he said in a statement. campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.

In addition, the group has accused Biden and those close to him of profiting “by selling access to the Chinese Communist Party, Ukraine and other foreign nations.”

The message came shortly after Jack Smith appeared before the press to explain that he expects a speedy trial to be held against the former president, accused of four counts related to attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 elections, in which he lost. against Biden.

Trump has been indicted by a grand jury for conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official process, obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official process, and conspiracy against rights.

The media have announced that the former US president must appear before a court in Washington next Thursday at 4:00 p.m. local time (20:00 GMT).

Trump will seek the Republican nomination

Trump is currently the favorite candidate, according to polls, to win the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election

Trump, indicted for his interference in the 2020 elections

The charges against the former president of the United States Donald Trump (2017-2021) accumulate. This Tuesday he has been charged for efforts to reverse the result of the 2020 elections, in which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Special counsel Jack Smith filed four charges against the former Republican president and has announced that he will seek a “speedy trial.”

“My team will seek to hold a speedy trial so that our evidence can be proven in court and judged by a jury of citizens,” the prosecutor said in a brief appearance before the press.

The four new charges against Trump

Trump has been indicted by a Washington grand jury on four counts for allegedly trying to reverse the result of the 2020 election in which he lost to incumbent President Joe Biden.

In his appearance, Smith read out the four offenses Trump is charged with, which are listed in a 45-page indictment: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct official process, obstruction and attempt to obstruct official process. and conspiracy against rights.

Smith has said that the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by a mob of Trumpists who tried to stop the ratification of the election results was “an unprecedented attack on the seat of American democracy.”

He has denounced that said assault “was fueled by lies” from Trump with the objective of “obstructing” the counting and certification functions of the presidential elections.

The local media announced that the former president must appear before the Washington court next Thursday at 4:00 p.m. local time (10:00 p.m. in Spain).

Trump anticipated the impeachment

Minutes before 5:00 p.m. local time (night in Spain), Trump had advanced on his social network, Truth Social, that he was going to be formally accused by Smith this Tuesday.

“I have heard that the Deranged Jack Smith, to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election, will release another False Imputation of his favorite President, me, at 5:00 PM,” the former president wrote.

“Why didn't they do this 2.5 years ago? Why have they waited so long? Because they wanted to do it in the middle of my campaign,” he said.. Misconduct of the Prosecutor's Office”.

Trump is currently the favorite candidate, according to polls, to win the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. A new accusation against him would not prevent the former president from attending the elections.

Smith, appointed as a special prosecutor for the Department of Justice, is leading the investigation of Trump for his involvement in the 2021 assault on the Capitol and the classified papers found in his Mar-a-Lago mansion.

Your other pending cases

For that second cause, in Florida, Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal charges for taking boxes full of classified documents to his Florida mansion when he left the White House in January 2021.

In addition, the former president was indicted in March in New York for the alleged illegal payment to the porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election campaign in exchange for her silence about the “affair” they had ten years earlier, and another case is open in Georgia about his efforts to overturn Biden's victory in that southern state in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump, 77, lost the 2020 election to Biden but did not admit the result of the vote, denounced false voter fraud and pressured officials to reverse the result.

The eurozone unemployment rate falls to 6.4%, but Spain continues to lead unemployment with 11.7%

The unemployment rate in the euro area fell one tenth in June compared to May and stood at 6.4%, which represents a new all-time low since the creation of the single currency, according to data published this Tuesday by the statistical agency Community Eurostat.

In the European Union (EU) as a whole, the unemployment rate in June remained stable at 5.9%, the same figure obtained in May, and thus also maintaining the all-time low recorded in the community bloc.

By country, Spain registered a drop in unemployment in June of 0.2 points compared to the month of May, standing at 11.7%, which continues to be the highest rate in the entire euro area and the entire EU, according to the data from Eurostat.

Countries with more and less unemployment reduction

Even so, this fall of 0.2 month-on-month points between May and June places Spain, together with Greece, as the two countries in the EU and the euro area where unemployment fell the most between the two months, although their total rates are the highest in the EU and the euro zone.

Spain (11.7%), Greece (11.1%), Lithuania and Sweden (both with 7.5%) are the EU countries that registered the highest unemployment rates in June.

At the opposite extreme are Malta (2.6%), Poland and the Czech Republic (both with 2.7%) and Germany (3%), with the lowest unemployment in the EU in June.

In absolute figures, Eurostat estimated that, in the EU as a whole, in June this year there were some 12.8 million unemployed people, of which 10.8 million belong to countries in the euro zone.

Compared to last year, the historical minimum of 6.4% unemployment in the euro area in June 2023 represents a reduction of three tenths compared to the 6.7% unemployment that existed in June 2022.

In the EU as a whole, the also historic low of 5.9% for this month of June 2023 reflects a drop of two tenths compared to the 6.1% unemployment that existed in June 2022.

Biden and Trump, tied for the 2024 presidential elections

The president of the United States, the Democrat Joe Biden, and the former Republican president Donald Trump (2017-2021) would tie in next year's elections with 43% of the votes each, according to a survey published this Tuesday by the newspaper The New York Times.

Biden, 80, will seek re-election in the November 2024 presidential elections, while Trump, 77, is the undisputed favorite in the primaries to choose the Republican Party candidate.

According to the aforementioned survey, 45% of Democratic voters support Biden repeating as a candidate, a percentage that has increased considerably since July of last year, when only 26% wanted the president to seek re-election.

The newspaper attributes this increase to the decision of the Supreme Court to eliminate the right to abortion, to the good performance of the Democrats in the mid-term elections and to the slowdown in inflation in recent months.

The same poll reveals that Biden's approval rating is 39%, low for a re-elected president, but up from 33% in July 2022.

If he does finally fight Trump, the Democratic leader would win among women, college students and African-Americans, but he is showing signs of weakness among Latinos, who are leaning Republican.

The survey was carried out from July 23 to 27 among 1,329 people, with a margin of error of 3.67 percentage points.

The New York Times published this poll one day after having released another according to which Trump is unbeatable against the rest of the candidates in the Republican primaries, despite being charged and facing numerous legal fronts.

The former president is the great favorite with 54% of support, well ahead of what was set to be his great rival in the primaries, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has 17%.

The rest of the applicants fail to get off the ground, as former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley keep 3%, while businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie they harvest only 2%.

Trump's popularity has not been diminished by his recent indictment for falsifying business documents in a case that includes porn actress Stormy Daniels, with whom the former president had an affair in 2006.

Nor for the 37 counts of which he has been charged for illegally taking classified documents after leaving the White House and having retained them at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida.

Trump himself anticipated on Monday that he will also be charged soon for the assault on the Capitol in January 2021, when a mob of his supporters attacked the Legislature to interrupt the ratification of Biden's victory in the last presidential elections.

The Government prepares to evacuate the 70 Spaniards from Niger after the coup

The Government of Spain is already working on the evacuation by air of the more than 70 Spaniards located in Niger, given the deterioration of security in the country after the military coup that has overthrown President Mohamed Bazoum.

The decision of the Spanish authorities is due to the absence of commercial flights that could be used by Spanish citizens, after the closure of the airspace in Niger and the current instability in the country.

For several days now, the heads of the Spanish embassy in Niger have made an email and a consular emergency telephone number available to Spaniards in that country to coordinate this evacuation operation.

The operation, coordinated between the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation, has been launched on the same day that France also announces that it will remove its citizens from the African country.

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced on Tuesday the implementation of an evacuation plan for its almost 600 citizens, as well as for Europeans who want it, from Niger, “given the deterioration of the situation” after the coup military that occurred at the end of last week.

France will also remove its nationals

“France is preparing the evacuation of its nationals and Europeans who wish to leave the country,” the statement said, adding that the decision was motivated by the attacks a couple of days ago on the Embassy in Niamey, the capital, as well as due to the closure of the airspace that has prevented them from leaving Niger.

The evacuation plan will be coordinated with the current Niger authorities, adds the French Foreign Ministry, although those who want to leave the country must go to the starting point, which will be announced “as soon as possible”, by their “own means “.

In principle, among the evacuees would not be the 1,500 French soldiers who have deployed in Niger, whose work was suspended by order from Paris last Saturday in response to the military coup on July 26.

The fight against tax fraud raised 16,675 million in 2022: it is 1.3% less than the previous year

The actions to combat tax fraud allowed the collection of 16,675 million euros in 2022, 1.3% less than the previous year, a decrease that is due to extraordinary effects that affected the result of last year.

Once these extraordinary effects are discounted, the homogeneous results reached 15,362 million, 2.7% more than last year, according to the balance of the tax control results of the Tax Agency published this Tuesday.

Most of this amount corresponds to direct income, 10,536 million, 16.6% more, while the induced -declarations that were presented after the deadline, but without the need for a prior requirement- reached 813 million, 7, 8% more. The rest of the amount corresponds to reductions of returns.

Last year, the Tax Agency carried out almost 1.9 million internal tax control actions, 5.2% more, most of them verification. These include 29,394 actions on large companies, multinationals and corporate groups (8.9% more), 2,971 on asset and corporate analysis (2.5% more) and 5,594 on concealment of activity and abuse of corporate forms (5.2 % further).

For its part, the control of relevant assets made it possible to settle a debt of 546 million from 1,130 files. 97 taxpayers artificially located in other countries were also identified, to which 28.2 million have been liquidated.

With regard to international taxation, the Tax Agency regularized tax bases in 2022 for an amount of 3,409 million euros and reached prior valuation agreements that guarantee future bases for more than 2,700 million.

Among the actions of the National Fraud Investigation Office (ONIF) is the analysis of the use of bank cards charged to accounts abroad (“offshore”), with which 78.8 million euros have been settled.

Emergence of underground economy

The actions to bring out the underground economy reached 2,312 in 2022, which made it possible to regularize quotas for 435 million euros, 8.8% more, and 122 million were paid to taxpayers who had been subject to entry and registration actions.

In addition, the Tax Agency made more than 29,000 face-to-face visits to sectors and areas of tax risk, of which almost 9,800 corresponded to the VAT plan and almost 1,800 were complementary to sectoral macro-operations.

The Treasury also highlights the induced effect of the notices sent to taxpayers to remind them of the need to declare rents, which according to their calculations has allowed the tax base to come out of 7,700 million in the last six years and collect 933 million.

The actions of the collection area allowed the outstanding debt to be reduced to 40,421 million, 3.8% less, of which 15,864 million was voluntary debt and the rest (24,558 million), executive debt.