The Minister of Finance, Arcadi España, has ratified that the Council of Ministers will approve this Tuesday the limit of non-financial spending—known as the spending ceiling—and the budgetary stability objectives, to subsequently send both documents to the General Courts, where they will be put to a vote.
In the press conference following the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy (CPFF), the head of Finance explained the budgetary stability path that the Executive has presented to the autonomous communities and which has been approved, despite the rejection of the regional councilors of the Popular Party.
The Government's proposal sets a deficit for the next fiscal year for all Public Administrations of 1.8% of GDP. Within this framework, the Central Administration will assume the largest part, with 1.5%; the autonomous communities will have an objective of 0.1%; local corporations must remain at equilibrium (0%); and Social Security will present a deficit of 0.2%.
España has specified that, within the deficit objective of 1.5% foreseen for 2027 in the Central Administration, 1.2% will be allocated to transfers to Social Security, in line with what was agreed in the Pact of Toledo, for an amount close to 23,000 million euros.
Likewise, he has indicated that another tenth of the Central Administration's deficit in 2027 is linked to the new tax on financial entities, whose collection in 2026 will correspond to the State and will be distributed in 2027 among the autonomous communities.
"Therefore, there is no room for criticism that the largest part of the deficit falls on the General State Administration, but rather that it is also shared equally with the autonomous communities," defended Arcadi España.
The stability path that the Executive has communicated to the autonomies also includes a deficit objective of 0.1% of GDP for the fiscal years 2028 and 2029, the same level that was proposed last year and was rejected by the Congress of Deputies.
In Monday's session, the public debt objectives for the autonomous communities were also set, which must stand at 18.9% in 2027, 18.3% in 2028, and 17.7% in 2029.
This stability framework for the 2027-2029 period provides regions with a fiscal margin amounting to 5,849 million euros. "In other words, voting against the objectives would imply that the communities would have to make an adjustment of 5,849 million," the Ministry of Finance has warned.
The Government's forecast is that the Plenary Session of the Congress of Deputies on July 14 will put to a vote the budgetary stability objectives and the deficit distribution among the different public administrations.
If Congress rejects the proposal again on that day, as has already happened in this legislature, the Executive contemplates a second vote in another plenary session scheduled for July 23. Both plenary sessions, the one on the 14th and the one on the 23rd, will be extraordinary, as they will be held outside the ordinary session period, which ends on June 30.
Although it is the same path that the Government presented last year and which was rejected, Arcadi España has insisted that he will open a round of contacts with all parties to try to achieve its approval. "I am not going to anticipate or play the fortune teller. So we are going to continue negotiating with the aim of approving these objectives in the Congress of Deputies, and we will work on it with all the parliamentary groups," he stressed.
Regarding the Popular Party, the minister has criticized the vote against by its regional councilors in the CPFF meeting this Monday, recalling that last year they abstained on the same proposal. "They will have to explain why. Why they are giving up more than 5,000 million euros for their territories," he reproached them.
Asymmetric deficit and new CPFF
Although the Government has initially set a deficit target of 0.1% of GDP for all autonomous communities, the Ministry of Finance is willing to study an asymmetric distribution, adapted to the specific financial situation of each territory.
The minister recalled that this formula was already applied in 2013, under the responsibility of Cristóbal Montoro, at the height of the financial crisis. "There have already been asymmetric deficits when the Popular Party was in government. The proposal in the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy is not new," he pointed out.
Therefore, "in an exercise of solidarity between territories," Arcadi España has encouraged the communities to present a proposal for the distribution of the asymmetric deficit and has expressed his willingness for the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) to prepare a draft, which would be sent to all autonomies for their analysis and subsequent debate in a new Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy.
The head of the Treasury has stressed that numerous communities have closed their accounts with a surplus and "do not need an additional financial cushion," while others, such as Murcia or the Valencian Community, present a more pronounced imbalance.
"I believe it is a debate that we must put on the table, that it is not the first, it has already been done, and that seems very positive to me for the set of autonomous communities, especially the Valencian Community and Murcia, which are the ones with the worst deficit figures and have a greater need for this oxygen, for this additional fiscal margin, which they could have if others contribute in a solidary way to cede them that margin," he has argued.