The PNV maintains an intense exchange of “documents” with the PSOE and maintains a strict silence about the progress of the most complicated negotiations in Madrid for the Basque nationalists in their history. Because Andoni Ortuzar’s party has decided to play together with Junts, ERC and EH Bildu the card of “national recognition” of Euskadi and Catalonia but needs to revalue its devalued role as a source of resources and power for Basque institutions. At the negotiation table, the management of Social Security stands out, an old desire of the nationalists that Sánchez promised to facilitate in December 2021.
“To have confidence between the parties [of a negotiation] you must first comply with previous agreements,” warned yesterday the deputy general of Álava Ramiro González. González is not part of the hard core of the PNV that negotiates directly with La Moncloa for nationalist support for the investiture, but he is the strongest institutional representative of Ortuzar in Álava, the next major electoral objective of EH Bildu.
Because the negotiation of support for Sánchez requires the PNV to go far beyond the strategy used for decades to pressure the PP and PSOE to appear in Euskadi. Agreements that allowed it to obtain funds from the central government used for large fiascos such as the Epsilon, Hiriko or Karrantza projects with tens of millions of euros wasted.
Andoni Ortuzar and his spokesperson in Congress Aitor Esteban placed in the preamble to the negotiation with Sánchez the list of 32 transfers approved by the Government Council on February 20, 2020 and which, in its last box, includes “initiating studies to the examination of subjects related to the economic management of Social Security. A matter that Sánchez promised to analyze between June and December 2021 and that along with 22 other competencies remain frozen.
«What do we want the vote for? To continue being the voice of Euskadi in Madrid. We want a voice and vote to achieve the transfer of Social Security. So that? To guarantee more and better pensions in Euskadi,” warned Andoni Ortuzar on July 9 in Vitoria. The PNV aspires to achieve this Basque Social Security in chapters and the first involves assuming “economic management.” The general secretary of the PSE-EE Eneko Andueza ruled out in EL MUNDO that this transfer could break the single fund, but the negotiation of the investiture goes beyond verbal commitments and legal frameworks.
A favorable scenario for a PNV that lost the monopoly of nationalist influence in Madrid in the last legislature. The specific result of the negotiation will also have a domestic reading in the open pre-electoral battle in Euskadi and, for this reason, as Itxaso Atutxa stated this week, the nationalists will rush the negotiation to the limit.
“We are very thorough and we are going to take all the time necessary,” Atutxa, president of the PNV in Vizcaya and wife of Aitor Esteban, warned last Thursday. A thoroughness that will take shape in the pending investments in Euskadi with the completion of the High Speed ??Train (TAV) as a priority. PNV and PSOE assume that Sánchez will accept the transfer of 5 Cercanías lines that have been negotiated since 2020. But Ortuzar needs to accelerate the transfer to Euskadi through two tasks of managing the undergrounding of the TAV in Bilbao, firstly, and Vitoria. If the PNV binds power and money it will be easier for them to agree on the formula that Sánchez accepts regarding the “nations” of Catalonia and Euskadi that his independence partners demand from him.