Sánchez manages to keep his investiture support intact in his latest budgets

ERC, PNV and Bildu, the partners of the Government, facilitate the path of the public accounts in Congress by not presenting amendments to all The Catalan and Basque separatists keep the negotiations open and the PNV manages to renew the Basque quota The 7 amendments of the opposition ( PP, Vox, Ciudadanos, Junts, the CUP, Foro Asturias and the former UPN deputies) will be overthrown with a large majority Pedro Sánchez has a clear path. He will be able to process his third and last budgets, with which he faces the final stretch of the legislature, with more support than he obtained in his investiture in 2020. In that vote he obtained 167 votes in favor, 165 against and 18 abstentions, those of ERC and Bildu. This time he can exceed 187. From Brussels, where the Prime Minister is most comfortable lately, he has boasted that his Executive, with 153 seats, “does its homework.” Sánchez takes chest that since 2015 three budgets in a row have not been approved in “time and form”. Its parliamentary partners, from the Catalan separatists to the Basque nationalists, passing through the minority parties, have given it stability by approving its public accounts and the entire legislative package of the Government in a particularly complex context: pandemic, war at the gates of Europe, crisis unprecedented energy and runaway inflation. To this is added that it is the first coalition Executive of democracy and that the PSOE, with 120 seats, has to negotiate until exhaustion. Even so, it has suffered heart-stopping votes in Congress, such as the labor reform. ERC, PNV and Bildu do not amend public accounts At the moment the budgets with the greatest investment in social spending in history, as the Executive sells, will pass their first exam in Congress next Thursday with a comfortable majority if there are no surprises. ERC, the PNV and Bildu, its main allies, have not registered an amendment to the whole. Complying with the ritual, they cleared up the unknown about the bell, speeding up the deadlines set by the Congress regulations. The PNV because it has closed with the Government the renewal of the Basque quota, a fundamental agreement for Euskadi. ERC and Bildu, with more reluctance, because they want to give the negotiation a chance. Of course, they warn that their final vote is not closed. PP, Vox, Ciudadanos, Junts, the CUP, Foro Asturias and the deputies expelled from UPN (159 votes) present 7 amendments to the total In any case, the Executive does not contemplate that those 18 deputies that make up Esquerra and Bildu vote in favor of the 7 vetoes that, as planned, have been registered by the PP, Vox, Ciudadanos, Junts, the CUP, Foro Asturias and the deputies expelled from UPN. “Irrereal”, “fictitious”, “electoral”, “irresponsible”, unfair”, “addled”, “teasing”. These are the adjectives that these formations have given them, totaling 159 votes. In principle, the Canarian Coalition and the BNG could be placed in abstention. In front of the Government, a majority of 187 votes is assured for the vote on Thursday where it only needs a simple majority, more yeses than noes. The negotiation with the parliamentary groups led by the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, and that of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, remains open. ERC: asks for improvements but does not mention the political conflict ERC was the first to send a statement half an hour before the Congress register closed, announcing its decision with the argument of giving room for negotiations that are still underway and underlining that they are fully aware of the serious context of economic and social crisis that the country is experiencing. “We are very far from being able to approve the accounts,” they point out in Esquerra because the pr These assumptions, in his opinion, have “ample room for improvement.” The Republicans cite “demanding” structural measures in terms of housing, a change in the energy model, adequate regional and local financing, and fiscal reforms to alleviate the social emergency. They also demand compliance with investments in infrastructures in Catalonia because their execution has been “manifestly insufficient”. be able to reach agreements. Not a word in that statement about the political conflict, dejudicialization, progress in “anti-repressive measures” for people who still have pending legal cases for the procés or the crime of sedition. Those have been the requests of the republicans in the last days. Sánchez separates the ERC’s support from the possible reform of the crime of sedition in the Penal Code. “One thing has nothing to do with the other,” said the President of the Government, who maintains his commitment to change the Code in crimes in which Spain is not “equable” with the main European democracies. But it will be, as he has remarked on several occasions, when he has the parliamentary majority to do so. According to the president, now he does not have that support: “Today it does not seem that we have it.” Bildu: all options are openAfter ERC came EH Bildu who spoke in similar terms: keep the negotiation open because the talks with the government are progressing. The Basque separatists have not gone into the substance of their demands beyond demanding social measures that “advance and improve the living conditions of the social and working majority.” They remember that they have “no commitment” with this government and that it is he who has to win their votes. He also warned that his final position in Thursday’s vote is not decided: “The Government should not take any scenario for granted, all options are still open today.” . Basque nationalists were the last to confirm that they would not veto the bills. The spokesman in Congress, Aitor Esteban, left Bilbao at a press conference to underline the importance of the agreement reached with the Government on a transcendental matter for the Basque Country: the renewal of the quota. The pact requires that this renewal be carried out “in the same terms and parameters” that were agreed with the Government of Mariano Rajoy in 2017, also to carry out the general budgets of the State for that year. Esteban reported that the negotiation is still “open” on other issues and more agreements may be reached in the coming days. The public accounts will pass their first litmus test if there are no unforeseen events, but the Government knows that there is still a lot of negotiation ahead for final approval at the end of the year.