Junts joins PP and Vox to overthrow the Government’s path of stability and anticipates its ‘no’ to the Budgets: “You don’t want them”

There were no surprises or last minute lifelines for the Government. This Thursday, Congress rejected the deficit path presented by the Ministry of Finance as the first step to approve the General State Budget project for 2026. And he did it with the votes against PP, Vox, UPN and Juntswhich on this occasion complied with the announcement of a break with the Executive that it made a month ago and used its seven key votes to tear down the fiscal framework and, also, to make it clear that it has no intention of carrying out the accounts when the Council of Ministers submits them in the coming months.

The fall of the path of stability It’s just the first setback which, foreseeably, the Government will have to face until its final defeat in the Budget vote, if this finally occurs. The law mandates that, if Congress overturns the deficit objectives proposed by the Executive, the Council of Ministers must approve a new proposal within a month and submit it again to a vote by the Cortes, something that will likely occur on December 11. If it were rejected again – and it does not seem that Junts is in the business of approving anything that comes from the Ministry of Finance -, the Budget project will have to adjust to the Fiscal and Structural Plan that the Government sent to Brussels a few months ago, with more restrictive investment margins for the autonomous communities.

In any case, the independentistas made it very clear this Thursday that they have no intention of lending their votes to push these bills forward. “Unless you count on approving them with the PP, everyone knows that you will not have Budgets,” said the Junts deputy Josep María Cruset to the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, during the parliamentary debate, in which he also assured that Montero’s “intentions” had been seen. “You don’t want to approve the Budgets, What he wants is for the PP to knock them down so that he can carry out his campaign in Andalusia”, where the first vice president of the Government will be the PSOE candidate, said Cruset, who told the minister that “her arrogance and non-compliance have blocked the legislature, and that same thing is going to leave her country without Budgets for another year.”

The pro-independence deputy was very critical of the fact that the Treasury has presented to Congress exactly the same path of stability that it already brought last year, despite the fact that it was already overturned then with the vote against Junts. “In politics, if you do the same thing you will achieve the same results”said Cruset, who accused the Government of living in a “parallel reality” and recalled that “in eight years [Montero] has been a minister, she will only have approved three Budgets. “Any other Minister of Finance would have resigned long ago due to manifest incapacity, but every time you fail to get the Budgets out you are not risking your money, but the money and the future of the citizens,” he denounced.

The official explanation offered by Junts to overthrow the path of stability was also the same as the one they gave last year: that the deficit margin granted to the communities is too poor and constrains their accounts. However, part of that oxygen that the independentists demand for the Generalitat of Catalonia will come in two ways: first, andThe Government raises the spending rule from 3.2 to 3.5% (they will have two tenths more margin to increase their eligible spending) by 2026. The maximum spending limit will be moderated to 3.4% in 2027 and 3.2% in 2028.

On the other hand, the autonomies They will receive next year the record figure of 157,731 million in advance payments for tax revenues that are exceeding all expectations thanks to the boost of the economy (mainly private consumption and investment) and employment. This amount represents 7% more than what they will receive this year. To that amount must be added another 12,569 million euros for the positive settlement of 2024, a year in which income via taxes also exceeded forecasts.

Montero promises to present Budgets

Despite the important political blow that the Government received this Thursday, which the Treasury was already resigned to receiving, Minister Montero promised that this year she will present a Budget project, unlike what has happened in the last two years. Break down the path of stability “it will not prevent at any time” that Congress debate a draft of accounts, assured Montero, who during her speech was very critical of a PP to which she said that “it will have to explain why it permanently demands resources for the territories and, when the moment of truth arrives, votes against granting greater spending capacity to the territories.”

Moncloa sources, for their part, abounded in the same line of ignoring Junts’ criticism and attacking the PP. “The stability path offered a deficit objective of 0.1% for 2025-2028”, so “no adjustment was required throughout the entire period”, recall these sources, who affirm that “now, the communities lose that tenth and will be obliged to register a balanced budget”.