The clock is ticking for the Catalan Executive to meet its objective and hence the president Salvador Illa chose yesterday to make a move. The head of the Government staged his support for the initiative for the Tax Agency of Catalonia to collect personal income tax, in an unprecedented intervention during a technical meeting held on Fridays. Illa thus seeks to seduce the Republicans, who today are holding the meeting of their highest body between Congresses and are immersed in closing the structure of the investment consortium, another of the investiture agreements pending execution.
After ensuring that he feels bound by all the points of the investiture agreement, the president He gave as an example the amnesty for independence leaders and as two examples. “And in a very special way I want to say that my commitment to moving towards the management of personal income tax and the Catalan Treasury is also total,” he added. The statements were made within the framework of the Technical Consell, a body that is headed every Friday by the advisor to the presidency, Albert Dalmau, and brings together the general secretaries of the Government. It is the first time that Illa attends and that the press is also allowed access.
This certain solemnity in the announcement is understood by the need for the Executive to convince the Republicans, whose votes along with those of the Commons are necessary to approve the accounts. After a week in which Jéssica Albiach’s team has dedicated itself to squeezing out the results of their negotiations – or substantially better in rental aid and dining scholarships – the Government now needs to focus on the approval of ERC.
Hence, all eyes are on Junqueras’s speech this Saturday morning, at the party’s national council. Last Monday, the Republicans modified their strategy to achieve personal income tax collection, by withdrawing the bill in Congress with which they wanted to modify several laws so that any CC AA could assume more fiscal responsibility. The president of ERC accepted that in this way they avoided clashing with the lack of support from other groups and paved the way for the green light to arrive in the future processing of the financing model law, with an agreement with the socialists to include the transfer in the management of that tax through some amendments.
Junqueras has been saying for days that there is harmony with the PSC but that what he needed was for the rest of state socialism to agree to agree on the collection of personal income tax, even though he accepted that there was no clear calendar for the financing law to reach the Cortes. PSOE sources accept that the financing debate could have taken its toll on Pilar Alegría’s campaign for the Aragonese regional elections and, hence, certain reluctance.
It remains to be seen if the fact that the commitment to personal income tax comes from Illa and not from a senior PSOE official is enough for Esquerra to give the green light to the negotiation of the accounts. In any case, the Republicans have used the situation to highlight another point of the investiture agreement, that of the investment consortium.
It is a tool that seeks to eliminate the most bureaucratic phase of infrastructure, such as the drafting of specifications and awards, with which it is expected to increase the percentage of execution. In Esquerra, without giving up personal income tax, they believe that the wave of indignation over Rodalies allows them to modulate their roadmap for more sovereignty in the Catalan Treasury if the consortium is obtained.
Sources from both sides of the negotiation, in which representatives of the Ministries of Transportation and Finance participate, have explained this week that they were already in the phase of closing the technical aspects and they even hope to get the consortium to a vote in Congress shortly. “If we cannot unravel such important issues for Catalonia, we will see that the PSOE has no interest in the Generalitat having Budgets,” the Republican leader had warned last Monday.
