Negotiation for the increase in defense expenditure relegates budgets | Spain

Since five years ago it began The Covid Pandemiathe Spanish political forces have not been able to opt between the urgent and the important. Everything has been urgent and important. Emergency peaks have been unequal, sometimes with brief intervals of some normality, but, again, exceptionality lives in Spain and in Europe. The need to accelerate spending in defense and security regarding the deadlines initially foreseen the negotiation of the budgets by 2025road to the fourth month of the year. All government's energies will focus on convincing partners, the adversaries and the public opinion of the pressing to invest more in material, effective and defense industry. There is no room to simulting this negotiation with that of the State accounts.

The government interlocutors and the external partners of the government reinforce the impression that there will be no budgets in 2025. Since the summer, the possibility of lifting the extension of last year's accounts had been invoked with emphasis several times, as many as it has been ruled out. The First Vice President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, is prepared to advance in the incipient dialogues nothing more than political circumstances become favorable. The perimeter of the negotiation is marked, but the circumstances have changed to worse.

Now it is about convincing the partners of the left – in the government to add, and outside the Executive, ERC, Bildu, and BNG – that transcend the classic economic dilemma of « cannons or butter », on the choice of the most beneficial between two convenient options. There is no basis to think that we can support the acceleration of military spending, which they consider to be detrimental to the welfare state. In the context of the 21st century and the socioeconomic situation of Spain that crossroads should not be such, they try to convince in government. Social expenses are guaranteed, without decrease, according to government interlocutors, especially if Pedro Sánchez persists and makes the European Union jointly to the increase in resources in security, in addition to granting credits and allows the fiscal rules to be relaxed extraordinarily. The latter is already a reality. A whole turn in European politics in less than two months; Once the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has made it clear to Europe that he is alone in his defense. Other sources, not so involved in the hard nucleus of the government's speech, recognize that the rise in GDP in defense to reach 2% “before” of 2029 will have some impact, even to be determined, on the priorities.

With the new scenario, facing the discussion of the budgets moves away again, recognize the different parliamentary sources. The low disposition of partners to facilitate public accounts contrasts with their inalienable decision to press the government to obtain demands from the past and the present more immediate. ERC does not consider, neither now in what remains of the legislature, to promote the approval of these budgets. Junts, on the other hand, is more than remains to make forecasts, but does not link or put in relation to its demands with the approval of the accounts. In that he coincides with ERC. On Friday the Republicans recorded of urgency in the Senate a battery of initiatives on the functioning of the trains of near Catalonia. Again, citizens suffered severe incidents last week. Not only has ERC sound alerts, since its opposition work in Madrid and Catalonia, but the Government of the Generalitat, chaired by the Socialist Salvador Illa, forced a meeting with Adif and Renfe this Sundaywith agreements immediately application.

The singular financing for Catalonia is another of the negotiation fronts that the government has open and that the partners do not relate to the budgets. EH Bildu and the PNV, always separately, are for the work of facing that negotiation, but it will not be on their own initiative. Meanwhile, they continue with their demand schedule.

With the PP there is nothing to talk about the budgets, but, necessarily, of the defense expenses. From the left there is no predisposition to facilitate the increase in defense expenses, an absolute rejection in the case of Podemos, and more nuanced in adding, which are willing to negotiate. The president of the Government opens this Thursday in La Moncloa, with delay in front of other European leaders, the dialogue with the parliamentary groups, except Vox. The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo He cannot get away from the position of the European Popular Party, so he will support the increase in defense expenses, they undublished interlocutors of his party. Both politicians will see Thursday, face to face and, until then, they will not stop throwing diatribes as they have done during the weekend. The videos of false images that the PP has launched against the PSOE, made with artificial intelligence, have set fire to the meeting this week. Feijóo also recriminates Sanchez to exclude Santiago Abascal, president of Vox. The Head of Government asks him to imitate the German right, winner of the latest elections, which excludes from dialogue and agreements to the extreme right. It will not be an easy conversation, although the shared diagnosis about Trump, Putin and Ukraine will relieve part of the discomfort.