There have been no surprises and the Congress of Deputies overthrew this Thursday, with the absolute majority of PP, Vox, Junts, the budget stability and public debt objectives for all administrations between 2026 and 2028, which is the step prior to the presentation of the General State Budgets for 2026.
Going deeper into the voting, PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Bildu, PNV, Canarian Coalition and BNG have voted in favor of the proposal, while Podemos and the Compromís deputy integrated into the Mixed Group, Águeda Micó, have abstained. Altogether, there are five times that the Government has tried to approve this deficit path in the current legislature, all without success.
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In this way, the Government, and specifically the Ministry of Finance, in the hands of María Jesús Montero, is forced to follow the same path in a second round. In the event that, again, this was overturned in Congress, the Executive would be obliged to present the 2026 General Budgets using the 2023 stability path, which was the last one they managed to move forward and was sent to the European Commission.
Regarding this, Montero, on the same day this Thursday, defended that the deficit path “only” implies that the central administration assumes the reduction of spending, for the benefit of the autonomous communities. “Specifically, 5,485 million euros that we make available to the autonomous communities to the detriment of this expense by the General State Administration. What is voted on this path is just that, it is nothing more.” Along these lines, he has reiterated that the only thing it means is that “it is the communities that do not reduce the deficit.”
The objective is to present the Budgets in the first quarter of 2026
In this scenario, María Jesús Montero hopes to be able to present the project with the 2026 General Budgets in the Congress of Deputies at the beginning or middle of the first quarter of next year, so that the public accounts could be approved throughout the month of April or May.
The deficit path, in practice, serves as a ‘roadmap’ in terms of debt and deficit for the General Administration of the State, the autonomies, local entities and Social Security. The one that the Government has tried to approve without success, at least in this first round, involved reducing the deficit of all Public Administrations from 2.1% in 2026, to 1.8% in 2027 and 1.6% in 2028.
By subsectors, a deficit of 0.1% of GDP had been set for the autonomous communities in 2026, 2027 and 2028, while budget stability had been set as an objective for the town councils.
In this way, fiscal consolidation fell on the General Administration of the State and Social Security. In the case of the AGE, the objective was 1.8% for 2026, compared to 2.2% in 2025. In 2027 the objective was 1.5% and in 2028, 1.4%. In the case of Social Security, the Treasury expected the deficit to be 0.2% in 2026 and 2027 and 0.1% in 2028.