ERC dislodges the PSOE by announcing its vote against the key decree for European funds

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The coalition government finds itself with a new parliamentary waterway due to the Catalan elections and a first episode takes place in the validation this Thursday of the decree for the management of European funds by the frightened of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya.

It is the decree on the model to follow to quickly present and execute projects covered by European funds and is key to the credibility of the Government in Brussels. Pedro Sánchez's Executive cooked it in Moncloa

without attempting parliamentary consensus with the opposition and had planned the validation as a military walk, but it was complicated this Wednesday with the announcement of ERC to vote directly against, without even raising an abstention that facilitates the approval. The pro-independence formation announced the negative vote of its important parliamentary group "because the Government does not specify the destination of the funds, nor does it take into account SMEs and other areas of the productive economy but, as it is written, what facilitates is that large companies of the Ibex, "said this usual ally of the Executive in Parliament.

"In addition, it is very non-transparent, and neither does it specify mechanisms that guarantee a truly territorial distribution." Its parliamentary spokesperson,

Gabriel Ruffian

, came to justify in his Twitter account the vote against the decree because "its real author is the CEOE and gives all the money to the IBEX."

Also because "the autonomous, municipal or local positions do not have decision-making power in the distribution."

The Government presents RD 36 that regulates the distribution of 140,000,000,000 in European Funds.

Let it know:

1) Its real author is the CEOE and gives all the money to the IBEX.

2) 0 autonomous, municipal or local positions have decision-making power in the distribution.

Esquerra will vote NO.

- Gabriel Rufián (@gabrielrufian)

January 27, 2021

The acting president of the Generalitat de

Catalonia

,

Pere Aragonés

, expressed his protest last week

in a meeting

of the Sectorial Conference organized by the Minister of Finance,

Maria Jesus Montero

, as this newspaper published. The Andalusian socialist rejected that the regional governments can influence the Recovery Plan by residing sovereignty over it "in the Congress of Deputies."

"I prefer to be very sincere with you, Pere", he came to say to an irritated Aragonese.

The PNV, abstention

At that same meeting, the Minister of Finance of the

Basque Country

,

Pedro Azpiazu

, also voiced criticism, sowing alarm in the

PSOE

about the position of the

PNV

in voting.

Your parliamentary spokesperson,

Aitor Esteban

, is in favor of abstention. Only Esquerra's escape, which anticipates more problems until the Catalan elections, put the validation of the decree in jeopardy on Wednesday night given the fragile majority of the coalition government in Parliament, which only counts with 155 deputies The general secretary of the socialist parliamentary group,

Rafael Simancas placeholder image

, had to telephone the parliamentary spokesman for

Citizens

,

Edmundo bal

, in search of help, as confirmed to this newspaper sources of the party that leads

Inés Arrimadas

Bal informed him that he had planned the abstention of his 10 deputies, but the pressure of the independentistas of the majority of the investiture caused Simancas to ask him to vote in favor to secure the decree.

Aftermath in Brussels

This is the so-called Royal Decree-Law 36/2020, by which urgent measures are approved for the modernization of the Public Administration and for the execution of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and, according to the Government, it is essential for Spain to be able to swiftly execute projects financed by the new European funds; its failure in Parliament would leave the image of

Pedro Sanchez

in Brussels, which has foreseen that Spain is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the funds with up to 150,000 million euros.

Socialist sources pointed out that it is not a question of the Government, but of the State, and they call for "responsibility." Sources of Citizens admitted to this newspaper the importance of the norm, "but for the same importance the Government should have tried to consensus on the management of European funds, which it has not done. "

Popular Party

He also reproaches the lack of consensus and that it is a decree that also reinforces Moncloa's power over European funds.

Therefore, the leader of the PP,

Pablo Casado

, wants to give a warning signal to the

European Union

by discarding the vote in favor of this decree of the Government of Sánchez for the management of the new community funds.

Carmen Calvo, the spokesperson

"We are not supporters because Moncloa appropriates European funds and has not made any attempt to agree on the decree," PP sources assure this newspaper. The rule was already born with controversy even within the Executive, because it left out the governance of funds initially to the second vice president,

Pablo Iglesias

.

His protest forced Sánchez to expand the directory to the entire Council of Ministers. The decree's official objective is to simplify and streamline the procedures for a rapid absorption of funds and their destination to "structural reforms towards a sustainable economy and a digitized society." It will be defended this Thursday by the head of the Presidency,

Carmen Calvo

, with the former minister

Elvira Rodriguez

as in charge of explaining why the main opposition party does not vote in favor of this decree.

The expectation of entrepreneurs

Pending its approval was not only the leadership of the PSOE, but also the main companies in the country, which see an important vein of projects as soon as the funds are launched and the awards are simplified. The decree creates a new figure of public-private collaboration called Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) for the execution of the different projects called

tractors

, contemplated in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

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