The Government has acknowledged this Wednesday that it does not currently have the parliamentary support necessary to approve the General State Budgets (PGE), but maintains its intention to present the project in Congress before the end of the first quarter of the year. The refusal of Junts and Esquerra Republicana to support the public accounts leaves the Executive without a sufficient majority in a legislature marked by arithmetic fragility.
The first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, committed to registering the 2026 Budgets before March, in compliance with the promise of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, despite the fact that the accounts approved three years ago are still in force. The difficulty in articulating a stable majority has so far prevented the approval of new budgets, a situation that has tense the political and legal debate around the constitutional obligation of the Executive.
Parliamentary arithmetic complicates approval
Government sources acknowledge that, despite open contacts with Junts, “right now the conditions are not met” to approve the project, since the support of Esquerra Republicana, a regular partner in key votes during the legislature, is not guaranteed either. These same sources suggest that the relationship with Junts could be stabilized with the eventual return to Spain of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, although today relations with the group are broken.
In any case, the Executive rules out giving up the presentation of the project. Montero has reiterated in the halls of Congress that the Government “has already said on many occasions” that it is going to present the accounts and has stressed that the determining factor is to check whether there is the capacity “to reach agreements so that the public accounts can see the light.” “That is what the Government is working on before its presentation and that is what we are working on,” added the minister, who promised to register them as “as soon as possible”, with March being the deadline.
The Constitutional Court has accepted the PP’s complaint in the Senate against the Government for not having presented the Budgets corresponding to 2024, 2025 and 2026. The decision of the high court adds institutional pressure to an Executive that defends that its will is to comply with the constitutional mandate, although parliamentary circumstances make it difficult.