The inaction of the Ministry of Finance pushes the autonomous communities to increase public spending up to 9% without restriction in 2024, according to the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF). Triple the rate of rise that you consider reasonable.

In a new recommendation sent to the acting Government, AIReF urges Minister María Jesús Montero to establish a reference spending rule for the communities to establish order and avoid a lack of control that will be difficult to curb in the future.

The current passivity of the Treasury makes it easier, according to AIReF, for communities to increase primary spending net of income by up to 9%. “This high margin for spending growth without the existence of the restriction that could derive from the spending rule could compromise the fiscal path in the future and imply a strong containment of spending that is difficult to implement in practice,” he states in his statement. report to endorse with nuances the macroeconomic picture of the budget plan of the acting Government sent to Brussels last Sunday.

Why this open bar? Because, despite the fact that the deficit rules are back in force next year and that the European Commission has recommended that a spending rule be applied, the Treasury has not established it for the autonomous communities, so they are preparing their budgets blind about the income they will have and the expenses they will be able to undertake. This was stated last month to this newspaper by the Minister of Economy and Finance of Madrid, Rocío Albert.

AIReF urges the Government to act and “to publish the Situation Report of the Spanish Economy provided for in article 15.5 of Organic Law 2/2012, of April 27, on Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability, which includes the rate of reference of the spending rule for the year 2024.

According to this article, Montero should have already given a signal of adjustment before April, but it coincided with the electoral campaign for the regional and municipal elections.. However, the organization chaired by Cristina Herrero maintains that there is still time, even in office, before regional budgets are closed.. What it has done is maintain that the CCAA must present a zero deficit in 2024, which AIReF considers insufficient and the regional governments, excessive, when Montero allows itself a 3% deficit.

Herrero has declared that the spending rule that should be established is a maximum increase of 3% and not at the current rate of tripling it.

Another reproach made by this body that is the guardian of public accounts is the obscurantism of the acting first vice president, Nadia Calviño.. «On September 25, the Council of Ministers received a report from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, on the situation of the Spanish economy.. In the event that it was the report prepared in accordance with the provisions of article 15.5, its content has not yet been published,” criticizes the Tax Authority.. Thus, it raises the question of what the objective of that report was if it was not to provide references for the spending rule.

Calviño presented it that day before the attempted investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo as a report to explain that “the Spanish economy is demonstrating its strength more than ever.”