Only Catalonia and the Community of Madrid have started the year without new budgets, unlike the four regions where there is an absolute majority and another ten, plus Ceuta, in which coalitions or minority parties govern, which speaks of the general stability of the regional executives.
The community that is missing from that list is Castilla y León, which will also start the year with budgets, but without an accompanying law, because the two groups of the coalition (PP and Vox) mistakenly supported the amendments of the PSOE and then chose to knock down their own project, which affects a part of the expected income.
NO BUDGETS FOR NOW
In the Community of Madrid, the divorce between the PP of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and her preferred partner, Vox, has resulted in the extension of the 2022 accounts, the only ones approved in the four years of mandate (in two different legislatures) that the popular leader accumulates.
Until the beginning of December, everything pointed to the PP and Vox agreeing on the 2023 budgets, but Vox presented its amendments to the project after the deadline, the PP did not want to make an exception for the regional Assembly to admit them and the party led by Santiago Abascal responded by announcing its vote against the proposal, thus condemning it to failure.
There is also no new budget in the City Council of the capital, where the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP), also sought the necessary support of Vox, but the demand of this party to eliminate restrictions on mobility in the center of the city has prevented any type of negotiation.
In Catalonia, the Government of Pere Aragonès has started the year with a “technical extension” of its budgets, hoping that in the coming weeks it manages to close an agreement with the PSC – or with JxCat, although its new role in the opposition makes it difficult – to gather the necessary support to be able to approve new accounts.
Aragonès has already closed an agreement with En Comú Podem and negotiations with the PSC have been advancing in recent weeks, so the pact between socialists, commons and ERC could be repeated, which has already allowed to endorse the general budgets of the State and the accounts of the Barcelona City Council.
In Castilla y León, after the error in the vote on the accompanying law and its subsequent rejection, this important complementary rule to the budgets will not enter into force until February or March through a bill of the PP and Vox groups, although with the forecast that it will be retroactive and affect the entire year.
BUDGETS THANKS TO THE ABSOLUTE MAJORITY
In Andalusia, the absolute majority of the PP has allowed budgets to be processed and approved without complications, unlike what happened last year, when they had to be extended, which the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno, celebrated as a message of “political, institutional and economic stability” of the region.
The Cortes of Castilla-La Mancha approved the budget on December 20, with the vote in favor of the socialist majority and against the PP and Ciudadanos; in Extremadura on December 23, with the same result and the abstention of Unidas por Extremadura; and in Galicia, on the contrary, the PP pulled its large absolute majority to approve alone the first budgets of the successor of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Alfonso Rueda.
STABLE COALITION GOVERNMENTS
The groups that support the Government of Aragon -PSOE, Podemos, CHA and PAR-, approved on December 29 alone the budget for 2023, with the rejection of the PP and Vox and the abstention of Cs and IU; and in Asturias they rushed one more day and took forward their accounts with the votes of the PSOE, IU, Mixed Group (ex Cs) and Podemos, against the PP, Cs, Forum and Vox.
The budgets of the Balearic Islands for 2023 were approved without difficulty on December 22 thanks to the majority of the left-wing coalition formed by the PSOE, Unidas Podemos and Més per Mallorca, and in the Canary Islands the government pact of the PSOE, Nueva Canarias, Sí Podemos Canarias and the Agrupación Socialista Gomera managed to get their fourth regional budget also without difficulties despite the opposition of the PP and Coalición Canaria.
The budget of Cantabria for 2023 was approved on December 22 with the votes of the PRC and the PSOE, and the rejection of the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox, to which not a single amendment was accepted, and the Valencian Community also approved theirs in a timely manner, despite the discrepancies and tensions between the partners of the PSPV Government, Compromís and Unides Podem, who accused the Socialists of acting with “disloyalty” for agreeing some measures with the opposition.
Unlike last year, when they were approved on January 18, the Regional Assembly of Murcia gave the green light to the regional budgets on December 29 thanks to the votes of the PP and its government partners (former Ciudadanos and Vox) and the abstention of Vox, despite the rejection of the PSOE, Podemos and Cs.
The Parliament of Navarre did so on December 22 with the support of the signatories of the legislature agreement (PSN, Geroa Bai, Podemos and Izquierda-Ezkerra) and the agreed abstention of EH Bildu, against Navarra Suma (UPN, PP and Ciudadanos), and in the Basque Country, the Government, as well as the three deputations and the three general meetings, They took the accounts forward with the only support of the PNV and PSE-EE.
The Parliament of La Rioja approved on December 19 the regional budget for 2023, but the accompanying law was delayed until the 29th, once the IU amendments were included.
In the case of Ceuta, the budget was approved on December 23 thanks to the agreement between the PP, which governs the autonomous city without an absolute majority, and the PSOE, as well as the favorable vote of the two non-attached deputies. The Minister of Economy and Finance, Kissy Chandiramani (PP), highlighted the “height of vision” demonstrated by the PSOE to approve this document.
