Moncloa ignores Yolanda Díaz with Defense and promises more military spending

• Politics Yolanda Díaz assures that the debt ceiling negotiated by PSOE and Podemos does not foresee spending more on Defense

• SMI Yolanda Díaz encourages the mobilizations for the SMI and charges Garamendi: "I ask him for a commitment to his country"

The government coalition faces a momentous political course, which will lead to municipal and regional elections, a true acid test for the PSOE.

And it does so without leaving behind old dynamics: the friction, the clash.

The increase in

spending continues to cause tension within the Executive.

To which is added the role of employers, the CEOE, in social dialogue.

Vice President Yolanda Díaz heated up the negotiation between Budget partners on Monday by assuring that the spending ceiling approved in July by the Council of Ministers "was not the increase [of spending] in Defense."

A version that is not shared in La Moncloa, nor in the socialist sector of the Executive, which defends Pedro Sánchez's commitment to NATO, made precisely during the Alliance summit in

to progressively increase defense spending each year until reaching in 2029 2% of GDP.

Government sources consulted by this newspaper explain that there will be an increase in the defense budget.

Díaz resumes this week, after the summer break, his listening process, with which he will compete in the next three months with the one that Pedro Sánchez will develop in parallel -he will star in thirty PSOE acts until the end of the year-.

And in this start, he marked his profile and political position in front of his partners by assuring in an interview in Ser: «There will be General Budgets and, as you know, in the spending ceiling that we have negotiated in the summer, of course there was not the increase [of spending] on defense”.

spending ceiling

Government sources point out that the spending ceiling is not established by calculating budget items, but is configured based on the evolution of income and the public deficit target.

Airef defines the spending ceiling as

: «A budget management instrument through which, once the income for the year has been estimated, the budget spending that allows compliance with the stability objective is calculated.

Therefore, a higher level of income would allow a higher spending limit as long as the stability objective is met.

Therefore, the specificity of items is not entered, but what Díaz pointed out this Monday is that in the spending ceiling, the first step to prepare the Budgets, it is not contemplated that there will be an increase in military spending.

An issue that although the PSOE tried to avoid, government sources assure that they are a Government that fulfills its commitments and that there will be an increase.

"We are a party of words and deeds," said Pilar Alegría, spokesperson for the PSOE, after the meeting of the Executive chaired by Pedro Sánchez.

"We are going to answer the question through the facts," she replied when questioned about the second vice president's statement.

In the Government they maintain that this greater spending on Defense does not have to be used only for weapons, but that an increase in investment can also translate into R&D&i in the military or technology sector.

This same August, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, already showed, in an interview with Europa Press, sure that the Budget project will include an increase in Defense spending.

"The Minister of Finance works perfectly, she knows perfectly what the Government's commitments are, and I am sure that, as she always does, she will pick up the commitments," she advanced.

The PSOE does not want to amplify the clash with Díaz and United We Can again over military spending, because the order is to reduce the "noise" within the coalition and try to ignore the stakes of its purple partners -what Sánchez he wants is to sell government action these months, and from there he took to the streets with more than 30 acts until the end of the year.

That is why the socialists tried to dodge the controversy publicly yesterday.

But where they did want to distance themselves from Díaz, raise their voices, was in the censorship that she once again made of the bosses, the CEOE - "it is not up to the country's standards", was their dart in reference to the blockade in the negotiation of the collective agreements -, endorsing again the mobilizations and protests announced by the unions.

The PSOE recognizes the "responsibility" of the social agents in these years, "also of the employers", and bets on "negotiation and dialogue" and not on mobilizations.

For the Socialists, the CEOE, like the unions, "have been able to stand by the people, putting their shoulders to the wheel, closing ranks with the Government in these very complicated months."

They leave Diaz alone, then, in her position of supporting the union mobilizations.

In the coalition, despite Sánchez's discomfort, there is still "noise"

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• Yolanda Diaz

• Ministry of Defence

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