While he is still passing the towel over his forehead to dry the sweat caused by the intense struggle to carry out the Amnesty Law, the Government is already warming up its muscles to face another intense session, with a frenetic pace: the Budgets. The Treasury has already contacted the political groups that support the Government, as Government and parliamentary sources confirm to EL MUNDO, in contacts that seek to see their disposition and demands but, above all, ensure that none of their allies will present an amendment to the all of the Public Accounts that puts them in danger.

The communication and contact channels have already been in place for “several weeks”, according to sources from the nationalist parties.. “At this time we continue talking and exchanging proposals, but as of today we have not yet reached an agreement to support the PGE,” they point out from Bildu.. “There have been contacts,” they say from ERC. The Executive also confirms that they have initiated “contacts” with Junts for other milestones such as the Budget law. The Government seeks to provide normality to Junts, to convey the message that it is integrated as another party in supporting the governance of the country, a leg on which the Executive relies. “Normality in relations with Junts as there is with other groups,” they summarize.

“It would not be logical for us to support the investiture and then not open the door for the Government to have Budgets to deploy social and economic policies,” is the message sent by the Executive's partners.

In La Moncloa they consider that despite how complex the current legislature is, since everything is overshadowed by the amnesty, the Budgets are a vital pike in their stability and for their prospects that the legislature will not be short.. Faced with the vision of some partners such as the PNV, ERC or Junts, who have already warned that the mandate may not be long, the approval of the Public Accounts would guarantee the Executive to reach at least until 2026, since in 2025 it could extend the numbers that now approve. That would be having half of the mandate guaranteed and surpassing in power the rubicon of the Catalan elections – formally scheduled for early 2025 -, another Tourmalet in the legislature.

Hence, in parallel to the negotiations to seal the amnesty, the Government has opened the dialogue for the Budgets. The scenario that is being considered and wanted in the Executive is to approve the accounts before the amnesty. Because the socialists consider that as long as the pardon for those involved in the process is being processed but has not been approved, there are more options to tie and attract Junts. With the rule already approved and in force, there is uncertainty about what attitude and what decisions Carles Puigdemont will take.

Parallel calendars

The race for two of the great regulations that will mark the legislature is launched. The amnesty will be approved by Congress expectedly next week and from there it will go to the Senate, where the PP has an absolute majority and can delay the processing of the norm for up to two months.. It must then return to Congress for final approval, which could be during the month of April.

The Budget calendar, for its part, is almost parallel in time.. A little more advanced perhaps, enough to try to guarantee its approval before the amnesty and thus have the support of Junts. Treasury sources confirm that the Government's intention is to take the deficit path to the Senate in the first days of February, when the first veto by the Popular Party will most likely occur.

As soon as possible, even in the first Council of Ministers to be held after this veto, the Government will approve another path. Another, because it will be a second but the deficit figures contemplated will be the same. There the process must be repeated: Congress approves them and the PP once again uses its absolute majority in the Upper House. And at that moment, the Ministry will present an opinion from the State's legal profession, and according to which the Budgets must be formulated with the deficit senate reflected in the Stability Program that the Executive sent to Brussels last week.. That is, the communities will have a deficit one tenth more restrictive.

But the important thing, from the Treasury's point of view, is that they will already have accounts in place that, if everything goes as planned, will reach Congress at the end of February or beginning of March.. Once presented, the times may vary but if what happened last year is taken into account, that period of time would not be more than a month and a half.. That is, they would be in force shortly after the arrival of spring.

Government attrition

The negotiation of the Amnesty Law has already entailed significant wear and tear with the Government, with the image of negotiations until the last minute where the Catalan independentists display achievements and returns every time something has to be voted on, be it the amnesty itself or, for example , decrees approved by the Council of Ministers. Nothing suggests that the Budget negotiation is going to be different. Quite the opposite, perhaps even more fierce. Social advances and territorial allocations are already some of the demands that the nationalists have raised.

In the Government they deny feeling prisoners of “blackmail”. They explain that they knew from the beginning the difficulty of the legislature and that the only way is dialogue to try to reach agreements. “Dialogue can never mean blackmail. Reaching important agreements means giving up top positions. An agreement, dialogue, can never be interpreted as blackmail or humiliation,” defended María Jesús Montero, first vice president of the Government and Minister of Finance.