The Ministry of Finance has summoned the autonomous communities next Friday within the framework of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF) to resume the reform of the autonomous financing system, in a new attempt by the Executive to reactivate one of the major territorial debates of the legislature.
The meeting was initially scheduled for the end of July, but the Government chose to postpone it until Friday, September 4, after accepting the request for postponement made by the autonomous communities governed by the PP due to the situation of the fires.
The call, made by the Minister of Finance, Arcadi España, will serve to analyze and submit to a vote the proposal designed by his department, an essential procedure before it can be approved by the Council of Ministers and then sent to the Congress of Deputies.
The meeting comes after the Executive has accelerated this summer both the discussions on the reform of the model and the parliamentary processing of the partial cancellation of the autonomous debt, for which the State will assume up to 83.252 billion euros of liabilities from the communities of the common regime.
In addition, it will take place a few weeks after the previous CPFF, in which the Treasury presented precisely its proposal to assume that debt of the autonomous communities.
In this line, the Government had already put on the table last January a first proposal for reform of the financing system, which was conveyed to the communities in a CPFF of a merely informative nature.
Widespread rejection except for Catalonia
However, that initiative was rejected by all the autonomous communities except for Catalonia, and the debate was paralyzed after the departure of María Jesús Montero from the Ministry of Finance to lead the PSOE candidacy for the Junta de Andalucía.
With the arrival of Arcadi España to the department, the Executive resumed in June contacts with the communities through bilateral meetings to advance in the reform of the model. However, the autonomous communities of the PP rejected this scheme and demanded that the negotiation be conducted multilaterally within the framework of the CPFF.
In this scenario, the intention of the Treasury is to achieve that the text receives the support of the Council this Friday to then elevate it to the Council of Ministers and subsequently send it to Congress.
By having 50% of the votes in this multilateral body, the Government will only need the support of one autonomous community to push the proposal forward, a backing that will presumably come from Catalonia.
The pact with ERC, at the origin of the model
The communities governed by the PP have reiterated in recent months that any reform of the system must be addressed multilaterally and have rejected that it could be conditioned by the agreement sealed between the PSC and ERC to develop a singular financing model for Catalonia.
Precisely, that pact has concentrated a good part of the criticisms from the autonomous governments of the PP, which accuse the Executive of wanting to introduce "privileges" for one community over the rest.
The debate on financing will also take place in a context marked by the Government's latest movements in the autonomous sphere.
In July, the Congress rejected the total amendments presented by PP and Vox to the bill for the partial cancellation of the autonomous debt, after Junts joined the investiture bloc and allowed the parliamentary processing to continue.
Likewise, the Lower House again rejected in the summer the stability path proposed by the Government for the General State Budgets (PGE) of 2027, which will force the Executive to design public accounts with a tighter fiscal margin for the autonomous communities, despite the fact that the CPFF had previously approved a deficit target of 0.1% for the regions with the rejection of the PP's autonomous communities.