• Surplus. The government wants the municipalities to lend all their surplus and then inject them with 5,000 million in installments
  • Surpluses. The mayors rebel against the government's proposal: "They bankrupt the municipalities"

The president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (Femp), Abel Caballero, has promised to transfer this Wednesday a new proposal to the municipalities that allows them to use part of their surplus to deal with the coronavirus crisis. However, the new draft that has been promised to the mayors will hardly contain some "minor" corrections and modifications, as explained by the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero. And taking into account the position of the Popular Party but also the rest of the political forces, the agreement that Caballero wants to seek seems very complicated.

"The PP cannot support, under any conditions, an seizure of municipal savings as we would be complicit in the waste of the Sánchez Executive," said the party's deputy secretary for Territorial Policy, Antonio González Terol, yesterday. The popular formation already pointed out last week that what they demanded was what the whole of the Femp, Caballero included, transferred to the Government already in May: a fund of 5,000 million euros, independent of the surplus, and proportional to the aid of 16,000 millions that the autonomous communities have obtained.

However, during the negotiation with Montero, what Caballero agreed was that the municipalities would voluntarily hand over the nearly 15,000 million to which their remnant amounts, and that from that money the Treasury would carry out a transfer of 2,000 million and another of 3,000 million more in 2021 that would not be computed as a deficit of the municipalities but of the State. And the rest of the funds would be kept by the Administration and reimbursed in the next 10 years.

" It is a sensible proposal, I would say that it is exciting to mobilize 5,000 million without incurring a deficit," the finance minister defended yesterday at the press conference after the Council of Ministers. The government spokeswoman also had an impact on the fact that the Stability Law and the Constitution itself prevent local entities from running a deficit, and that the proposal is "the only instrument for municipalities to be protagonists". And he warned: "Hopefully the next meeting of the Municipality Federation will vote on the development of this proposal because there is no alternative to not doing it ."

Caballero has shared in the last days that positive reading of the agreement that he reached with Montero, but the differences both with the PP and with Junts per Catalunya, Ciudadanos or even Podemos , partner of the PSOE government, are evident. Furthermore, the proposal led by the party led by Pedro Sánchez has been criticized, although these positions have been moderated thanks to some concessions, such as the suspension of the spending rule in 2020 and perhaps in 2021, but also by mandate of the match.

In this context, PP sources point out that Caballero may be the president who ends up breaking the historic unanimity of the Femp . The decisions in the Federation of Municipalities have always been made with the agreement of all the parties, beyond the political acronyms, but from the Popular Party it is denounced that this situation has changed. That the socialist mayor of Vigo, they add, has prioritized the interests of the PSOE over the needs of the municipalities.

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