Pere Aragonès conditions the solidarity of the Catalan financing model to advances in territorial cohesion

One day after making public the content of the Generalitat’s proposal for Catalonia to have “singular financing” and already in the middle of the electoral pre-campaign, the president Pere Aragonès explained its content this Wednesday in Madrid. The Republican leader also recalled at an informative breakfast organized by Europa Press the good figures of the Catalan economy and wanted to clarify why poor financing of the Generalitat has a negative impact on the performance of the State as a whole. And that is where an idea of an evolved model of Basque financing has been circumscribed, where the Government would be in charge of collecting all taxes and funds would be sent to the Government through two channels: one as payment for the services received, and another through a newly created interterritorial solidarity fund, the duration and amount of which Aragonès has conditioned temporarily, and the fulfillment of territorial cohesion objectives.

“8% of the Catalan gross domestic product each year goes in the form of taxes to State institutions and does not return in the form of services, transfers or investments. All this time the contribution [al resto de España] It has been extraordinary, but in Catalonia there are also social situations to address, we have 24% of citizens at risk of exclusion,” Aragonès recalled. He president He has defended maintaining a quota of interterritorial solidarity, in addition to payment to the State for the services it receives, but has assured that this contribution must be “subject to certain objectives and limited in time.”

The Government insists on not wanting to estimate how much these two contributions would amount to, and Aragonès has repeated that this should be agreed upon in the State-Generalitat bilateral commission. The proposal of president arises from a commission he made to the Department of Economy of the Generalitat, after in last year’s investiture agreements between ERC and PSOE they committed to studying how to improve the situation of the Catalan coffers after agreeing that there was underfinancing. The Government proposes that the Tax Agency of Catalonia (ATC) be the one that collects 100% of the taxes that Catalans pay annually, some 52,000 million euros and without counting any aspect of Social Security. Now the ATC only receives 9%.

Aragonès wanted to make it clear that Catalan solidarity would have to be well delimited and that ordinality would play a fundamental role there, the principle of the financial relationship between communities by which an autonomy should not lose positions in the income level due to the mechanisms of leveling between communities. Catalonia is the third community that gives the most to the common fund and occupies 14th place when it comes to receiving resources. He also recalled that, according to official figures, only 40% of the investments budgeted by the State are executed. After trying to adjust this gap, the Generalitat would negotiate the amount of the solidarity fund based on the fulfillment of objectives in the “degree of territorial cohesion” and the application of measures that favor the productivity and competitiveness of the territories with lower fiscal capacity. He president He assured that it is the same paradigm applied by the European Union, where, as he explained, “there are common standards and internal solidarity, but subject to objectives.”

The Catalan leader has landed in Madrid with the Government’s refusal to debate his proposal, which was made public on Tuesday at the Palau de la Generalitat, and after the first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, referred him to negotiations. any improvement within the framework of the common system. Faced with an initial audience that was not only unreceptive to the independence theses, but also very suspicious of any maneuver that gave the impression that the Generalitat was being privileged, Aragonès began his speech by recalling how the Government had ended up giving in to things that it had previously described of impossible. And he has granted amnesty to the leaders of the process oa the Penal Code reforms as examples.

“We have three years, in this legislature, in which there will be many votes in which our votes will be necessary. The president promised at his investiture to address this negotiation; he will have to comply with the investiture agreements. If the agreements are fulfilled, there may be new agreements,” said Aragonès, trying to highlight his capacity for influence within the majority that supports Pedro Sánchez, while sending a message about the stability of the legislature.

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The head of the Government sees a real negotiation on financing within the framework of the common regime as impossible. “If we go to a multilateral negotiation there will be no agreement,” he assured, recalling the primacy of the Popular Party in the distribution of autonomous power. And he has criticized the territorial barons, also from the PSOE, because first they attack the Generalitat, but then they emulate it. “The best example is when we agreed to forgive part of the FLA debt [Fondo de Liquidez Autonómica] within the framework of the investiture agreements.” “I am not going to negotiate with other territories, (…) I am not going to accept conditions from other territories,” he stressed.