The president of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), Inés Olóndriz, has urged to "recover" the central function of the General State Budgets, after several years chaining extensions, in order to strengthen institutional quality, transparency, public account supervision, and accountability.
In her speech at the CREO Forum, organized by Cinco Días, Olóndriz emphasized that Spain must improve its fiscal planning and that this process starts "by recovering the role of the General State Budgets."
"After several years of budgetary extensions, it is necessary that we once again have Budgets to improve institutional quality, to improve transparency, to improve fiscal supervision and accountability," she stressed.
The head of the AIReF has reiterated that annual accounts cannot be conceived in isolation, but integrated into a medium-term fiscal strategy —the current framework covers 2025-2028—.
"The medium-term structural fiscal plan must set the multiannual trajectory and the annual Budgets must be able to translate that strategy, each year, into concrete decisions," she indicated.
For this reason, she considers it a priority to start designing the next medium-term structural fiscal plan, which, in her opinion, must incorporate complete and coherent fiscal scenarios and macroeconomic forecasts.
Olóndriz has also raised the convenience of coordinating the new European fiscal rules with the national ones and better delineating the objectives and responsibilities of each administration. "In a country as decentralized as Spain, where the spending of the autonomous communities weighs heavily in the total, it is necessary that they also participate in the conception of that fiscal plan that ultimately affects us all," she pointed out.
New European framework and situation of the Spanish economy
The president of the AIReF has reminded that the new fiscal framework of the European Union, in force since 2024, focuses on a medium-term vision to ensure the sustainability of public finances, setting multiannual commitments adapted to the initial situation of each member state.
In the case of Spain, these commitments must be compatible with a downward trajectory of the debt. "Spain is facing this new European environment from a relatively favorable short-term situation, especially when compared to countries in the European environment," he emphasized.
The projections of the AIReF indicate that real GDP will grow around 2.5% this year and 2.1% in 2027, before gradually moderating to rates close to 1.7% in 2030.
According to Olóndriz, this deceleration responds to the fact that the factors that have driven activity in recent years will tend to be exhausted or normalize, among them the investment financed by the Recovery Plan and the evolution of migration flows.
In terms of public accounts, the latest forecast from the AIReF places the deficit for 2024 at 2.7% of GDP, although the institution will update these figures at the end of the month.
Looking ahead to the medium term, the agency anticipates a gradual reduction of the deficit to remain, by 2030, slightly above 2%, along with a downward path of the debt/GDP ratio, which, however, would remain around 100%.
"This, when compared to countries in the environment, is a situation that may seem not so calamitous," Olóndriz clarified, while warning at the same time that medium and long-term spending pressures are beginning to emerge that call into question the sustainability of that trajectory.
Aging, debt, and other spending pressures
"There are especially structural pressures on the aging side," he warned. The demographic change will affect both the potential for growth —by weakening the labor factor's impulse— and the volume of public spending needed.
For the president of the AIReF, Spain needs to sustainably improve productivity if it wants to maintain significant growth rates in a context of an aging population.
This aging, he added, will increase the demand for public services, from pensions to healthcare and long-term care, which will further strain the budget.
Olóndriz also warned of the rising cost of debt. Financial markets have shown greater tensions since the summer, and this will translate, over time, into higher interest rates, adding to the increases already recorded.
"Therefore, an interest bill for that debt which, ultimately, detracts resources for other policies, because the fiscal margin we have is not ample," she pointed out.
She also mentioned the pressures arising from the geopolitical context, particularly the increased spending on defense, which has already been growing and will continue to do so in the coming years.
Olóndriz recalled that Spain is among the 18 countries in the European Union that have requested to activate the escape clause, which grants more flexibility to accommodate certain measures within the margins of the fiscal rules.
However, she emphasized that this flexibility does not make spending or its impact on the deficit and debt disappear. "What that flexibility allows you is to gain a little time and delay some possible adjustments that should be made," she stressed.
According to the latest update from the AIReF, the growth of spending in 2026 will be at 6.6%, well above the 3.5% committed to Brussels for this year under the structural fiscal plan. "Without that flexibility, without that escape clause, this spending deviation would undoubtedly represent a breach of commitments," concluded the president of the agency.