The Minister of Finance promised that no administration would run out of liquidity to meet its expenses in this crisis. Well, the most pressing of all these expenses is the sanitary. The fight against the pandemic is forcing the autonomous communities - which manage health powers - to make a huge outlay that threatens the balance of their accounts . María Jesús Montero assures that she will maintain a "fluid dialogue" with the autonomous communities, but they complain that Montero's last meeting with the councilors of the Treasury was on March 24. Since a month ago, therefore, they have not heard from the Ministry of Finance and need to know how they will cope with their new financial needs.

Autonomous governments of different sign have addressed Montero by letter with the same argument that Pedro Sánchez tries to assert in Europe: the creation of an extraordinary fund not subject to conditionality, with the State as guarantor of its redistribution based on needs of each autonomy. Some communities warn that without extraordinary measures they will have to face treasury problems, and denounce the rigidity of the Treasury : to date, the current regulation has not undergone any modification that allows it to overcome the spending ceiling, incur a greater deficit or increase the volume of indebtedness. It is up to Minister Montero to ensure the fiscal balance of all administrations. But the lightness shown by his department during the 2019 fiscal year is striking - with the so-called electoral Fridays and other spending measures that ended up diverting the deficit target by several tenths, which earned Montero the harsh Brussels correction: it raised the deficit after an express examination to 2.8% - and the inflexibility it now exhibits in the face of demands for autonomies on which the bulk of the financing of health services falls. It is not understood, for example, that the reasonable demand of municipalities such as Madrid and other administrations with surpluses to allocate it to health spending is not met.

The Government cannot adopt a speech before the European institutions and a different one before the regional authorities. Well understood solidarity must start at home , and in this sense the wishes of a reconstruction that involves at all levels of the State announced in Congress by Sánchez are welcome. But when it has the extraordinary power of a single command under alarm, a government cannot stick to announcements and wishes: it must take concrete steps and preach with the facts. The communities and municipalities, as administrations closest to the citizen and subject to maximum pressure, await your response.

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  • Editorial
  • Europe
  • Maria Jesus Montero
  • Pedro Sánchez

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