Sánchez will face the campaign closing negotiating in Brussels the ambition of the next European budget.

The electoral advance announced this Monday by Pedro Sánchez will force the president of the Government to combine the campaign for the general elections on November 29 with one of the most relevant economic negotiations of the European legislature: the closure of the future Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for the period 2028-2034.

The calendar places the head of the Executive before a particular political coincidence. On November 26 and 27, just 48 hours before the Spaniards go to the polls, the president of the European Council, António Costa, has summoned the heads of State and Government to an extraordinary meeting to try to finalize the main pending agreements on the next community budget. The meeting will therefore coincide with the last two days of the electoral campaign in Spain. While the parties rush their final acts and seek to mobilize their electorates, Sánchez will have to sit down with his European counterparts to negotiate the size and financial architecture of the budget that will determine the spending priorities of the Union for the next seven years.

The coincidence takes on special relevance due to the position that Spain holds in the negotiations. The Government is part of the group of countries that demands to preserve the budgetary ambition of the Union, maintain sufficient funding for cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and provide Brussels with new sources of income to address community priorities without transferring all the effort to national budgets.

Sources from Moncloa convey that the electoral advance has not modified the Executive's objectives in the negotiation. "Reaching an agreement by the end of the year," they point out, as confirmed by the Minister of Agriculture Luis Planas in a conversation with Demócrata. European sources consulted by this newspaper also place the closure of the file before the end of 2026 as the horizon that remains on the table.

The budget negotiation enters its decisive phase

The extraordinary meeting convened by Costa represents one of the main milestones of the negotiating calendar for the next MFF. The Twenty-Seven will have to reconcile positions on a proposal that will determine how much money the Union will have available between 2028 and 2034 and how resources will be distributed between traditional policies and new community priorities.

The discussion has acquired a particularly political dimension because the next budget will have to respond simultaneously to greater financing needs in areas such as defense, competitiveness, energy transition, or strategic autonomy, without neglecting the items that have historically supported a good part of European construction. The proposal from the European Commission has opened a debate about the architecture of the budget and the management model of the funds. One of the main points of friction lies in the reorganization of the items and in the weight that agricultural and cohesion policies will have within future financial instruments.

In contrast to the States that demand to contain spending and national contributions, Spain has aligned itself with the so-called "friends of cohesion," a group of seventeen countries that advocates maintaining solid funding for traditional policies. The negotiation thus faces two conceptions about the future budget: that of those who consider it necessary to expand the available resources to respond to new priorities and that of those who intend to limit the financial effort of the member States.

Spain demands new revenues to finance the budget

The Spanish position is not limited to defending the maintenance of cohesion and agriculture items. Madrid also demands to open the debate on the revenues of the future budget to avoid that the reinforcement of community priorities falls exclusively on national contributions.

In a letter sent to the President of the European Council, António Costa, and to the negotiating team of the Irish Presidency, which DEMÓCRATA has accessed, seventeen member States led by Italy demand new sources of "genuine, fair, simple, and non-regressive" revenues to finance the next MFF.

The signing capitals consider that the new European priorities require adequate additional resources and that a reduction in funding allocated to cohesion and the CAP would not contribute to modernizing the community budget, but could weaken it and undermine public support for the European project. The proposal also incorporates alternatives to alleviate pressure on national treasuries. Among them is a more gradual repayment of the debt associated with NextGenerationEU, as well as the possibility of resorting to limited and specific European debt instruments.

This last issue constitutes one of the main points of disagreement with the European People's Party. The MEP and negotiator for the popular party, Isabel Benjumea, defended in conversation with DEMÓCRATA that her political family is against issuing more European debt, considering that the community budget already has difficulties in meeting the financial commitments arising from previous loans.

The discussion on revenues will therefore be one of the elements that leaders will have to address at the extraordinary summit. The goal of the countries calling for greater budgetary ambition is to expand the financial capacity of the Union without proportionally increasing national contributions.

The CAP and cohesion, among Madrid's priorities

For Spain, another of the fundamental lines of negotiation is to prevent the redesign of the budget from ultimately weakening two of the policies that have historically concentrated a significant part of European funds: agricultural policy and territorial cohesion. The Government has also joined forces with France and Portugal to demand sufficient funding for the outermost regions, including the Canary Islands. The three capitals have requested that the specific needs of these territories be adequately reflected in the future National and Regional Partnership Plans and in the provisions relating to co-financing rates.

The lawsuit seeks to ensure that the structural limitations arising from the geographical location of these regions have a specific budgetary reflection and that the new model does not dilute the existing support mechanisms. The defense of these items has also been conveyed by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, in an interview with DEMÓCRATA. The minister expressed his support for trying to finalize the agreement on the MFF before the end of the year. "There is a conjunction of circumstances in which, honestly, I believe it is worth trying to conclude the agreement here, in the month of December," he pointed out.

The Costa calendar points precisely towards that objective. After the contacts maintained with the capitals over the last few months to bring positions closer, the November meeting should serve to turn the different proposals into a possible political agreement among the Twenty-Seven.

The campaign closure, at the European Council table

The coincidence between the summit and the elections introduces an additional element into Sánchez's political agenda. The president announced this Monday the call for general elections for November 29, after acknowledging the need to renew and expand the parliamentary support of his Government.

In his appearance from the La Moncloa Complex, the socialist leader defended that citizens must decide what role they want Spain to play in a stage marked by international tensions, the climate emergency, and social and technological transformations. Sánchez also positioned the confrontation between the progressive and far-right projects as one of the axes of the upcoming campaign.

With the electoral calendar already defined, the campaign will start on November 13 and conclude on the 27th, according to the deadlines established after the call. The extraordinary meeting of the European Council will therefore occupy its last two days. The president will have to balance the final stretch of the campaign with a negotiation that directly affects Spain's financial interests. The dimension of the budget, the distribution of funds, the financing of the CAP and cohesion, the new own resources, and the specific treatment of the outermost regions will be among the issues that will condition the agreement.

The position of Moncloa, at least for now, is that both calendars do not alter the objectives of the Executive. Spain maintains its commitment to an ambitious European budget and the Government retains its intention to close the agreement before the end of the year, despite the fact that the negotiation will coincide with the decisive moment of the electoral campaign.

On November 27, the Spanish campaign will end and the extraordinary meeting in which European leaders will try to reconcile positions on the budget for the next seven years will also conclude. Two days later, the Spaniards will decide who will have to defend the interests of the country in the next phase of the European negotiation.