Public accounts The investiture leaves the approval of the Budgets up in the air but the Government defends that it will try to get them out in "time and form"

The acting Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, affirmed this Thursday that the Government is doing everything possible so that the 2024 General State Budget (PGE) goes ahead in “time and form”. “The will of the Government is to be able to approve the Budgets in a timely manner so that they enter into force on December 31,” Montero said during an interview on TVE.

Although the acting minister has recognized that the current political situation may “delay” their approval, Montero has insisted that it will simply be “a delay with respect to the approval” of the public accounts.

Montero has indicated that all the previous work that the budget project implies is being carried out, such as determining the perimeter where the public accounts of 2024 will move and the work with Brussels and within the Government itself, with the economic forecasts that will serve as a basis to next year’s PGE.

“We are going to continue working so that by the time it is constituted, the investiture is constituted and the Government is appointed, this project can be promoted, but it is still premature to say that the Budget project is renounced,” he stressed in an interview collected by Europa Press.

In fact, the Minister of Finance has insisted that the instruction she has received from the acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, is to work on the budget project.

Reality, however, puts pressure on Montero’s words. The investiture debate of the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, for September 26 and 27 certifies the need to extend the General State Budget (PGE) for next year, since the bill should be presented in the Cuts before the end of September, for its parliamentary processing and entry into force on January 1.

In its article 134, the Constitution establishes that the General State Budgets must be presented in Congress “at least three months before the expiration of those of the previous year”, but with the date of Feijóo’s investiture, which could not prosper forcing to a new debate with another candidate weeks later, it becomes very difficult to adjust in time and form to the constitutional provision.

In fact, the preparation of the PGE usually starts in July with the call of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council, as well as the National Commission of Local Administrations, to inform autonomous communities and town halls of the deficit targets set, procedures that do not have been carried out when Spain is in the electoral period.

the same article of the Constitution establishes that “if the Budget Law is not approved before the first day of the corresponding financial year, the Budgets of the previous year will be considered automatically extended until the approval of the new ones”.

One piece of information that augurs the budget extension is that the Ministry of Finance and Public Function is not planning to define a new non-financial spending limit for the State by 2024, known as the spending ceiling, until a new government is formed, according to sources. from the Ministry to Europa Press.

This limit or ceiling is a step prior to the elaboration of the General State Budgets and serves, precisely, as a management tool for them, since it is the limit with which the Public Administration has to comply with the objectives of budget stability.