The Minister of Finance, Arcadi España, has proposed this Monday to the autonomous communities to set a deficit target of 0.1% of GDP for the fiscal years 2027, 2028, and 2029, while informing them that next year they will have "the largest resources in their history," according to sources from his Department who spoke to Europa Press.
Arcadi España has chaired the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy (CPFF) for the first time, where the stability objectives of public administrations have been addressed in preparation for the General State Budgets (PGE) of 2027.
In this meeting, the Ministry of Finance presented the 2027-2029 stability path to the autonomous communities, which maintains a deficit of 0.1% of GDP, the same ceiling that was put on the table last year and was then rejected by the Congress of Deputies.
This fiscal trajectory for the period 2027-2029 grants the autonomous communities a budgetary margin amounting to 5,849 million euros. "In other words, voting against the objectives would imply that the autonomous communities would have to carry out an adjustment of 5,849 million," the Ministry of Finance warned.
At the same time, the head of the Ministry of Finance has informed the regional governments that in the next fiscal year they will have the largest allocation of resources recorded to date. Specifically, total funding, adding advance payments and the settlement of the 2025 system, will register an increase of more than 8%.
Arcadi España also emphasized that these amounts could grow if the reform of the regional financing model proposed by the Government, which is expected to be debated in a new Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy before the end of July, is finally approved.
On the other hand, and as explained by various regional councilors, the Ministry of Finance has proposed that the autonomous communities have a spending growth margin of 4% for next year.
Spending Ceiling and Vote in Congress
After Monday's meeting with regional representatives, the Executive is considering approving, the following day, in the Tuesday Council of Ministers, both the non-financial spending limit—the so-called spending ceiling—and the budgetary stability objectives, to subsequently send both agreements to the Courts and submit them to a vote, according to Government sources confirmed to Europa Press.
The roadmap involves the Congress of Deputies submitting the stability objectives and the deficit distribution among the different public administrations to a vote in the Plenary Session on July 14.
If they are rejected in that first vote, as has already happened on other occasions during the legislature, the Government contemplates a second vote in a plenary session convened for July 23. Both the plenary session on the 14th and the one on the 23rd will be extraordinary, as they will be held outside the ordinary session period of Congress, which concludes on June 30.
The Executive's intention is to initiate conversations about the 2027 Budgets with the parliamentary groups once these objectives have been internally finalized, with a view to being able to register the public accounts project upon returning from the summer.