The Government will request 94,300 million euros in a new plan of European funds before the elections and without agreeing with the Popular Party, despite the last result in the elections. The first vice-president, Nadia Calviño, announced before the audience of the annual meeting of the Cercle d'Economia in Barcelona that "next week" the Council of Ministers will approve this new plan, the so-called "addendum", for presentation to the European Commission. Brussels will then have to judge whether the plan, with milestones until 2026, is adequate to approve such additional disbursement.
This is an even greater magnitude than the 70,000 million subsidies already allocated to Spain, but in this second part they are mainly soft loans from the European Union.
Calviño has justified such a move, because "we can not stop the investments that are underway" and we must ensure "100% of the resources" available to Spain. The European Commission theoretically gives until the end of the year for the request of the bulk of the money, although sources of the Ministry indicate that it is necessary to do it before the summer.
The problem is that the European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, the socialist Paolo Gentiloni, has asked that this new plan, which can only be executed in the next legislature, be the subject of consensus between at least the two main government parties. PP sources assure this newspaper that they have not received any information from Calviño about this plan.
The first vice president has replaced the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, at the closing of the Cercle meeting, because the leader of the PSOE has declined at the last minute to attend. Given the criticism of the president of Cercle, Jaume Guardiola, to government measures such as the Housing Law, Calviño has assured that "the management balance has been positive". "We have not stopped working for a minute and we have responded better than other countries," said the vice president. "Our economic policy could not be more centrist," he told the audience. And he has affirmed that he hopes to "continue it in the coming years", implying that it will remain linked to the Government if Pedro Sánchez manages to form it after the elections, "without that having to do with entering the electoral lists, which I have never entered".
"Everyone has Spain on the map to invest, because a structural change is taking place," he said. According to Calviño, the complete plan of the European funds will raise "3% the potential growth of Spain".
Of the Housing Law he has described the text approved with Podemos as "balanced", but has affirmed that in the addendum it includes a fund of 4,000 million for public-private collaboration in the promotion of housing.
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