The keys to Podemos in the PGE: 15% in corporate tax and universal care benefit

We counted a couple of weeks ago that the PSOE delayed the Budgets. That he was not calling his partner, Unidas Podemos, to any meeting. And that the purple ones warned of the difficulties that there would be in the negotiation: “Having a coalition does not mean saying yes, there are things to accomplish, and we have already drawn up our strategy“Sources from Podemos warned in conversation with this newspaper.

Economically, the team of Yolanda Diaz wants tax reform now. But as they have seen that it is impossible in the face of Pedro Sanchez, in the speech of Nadia Calvin and in the crossed notes with Maria Jesus Montero, they cling to a specific demand: “The Corporation tax must have a common minimum for all companies 15%“. The idea, they remember, they have been demanding for years,” but it is now a G20 agreement, proposed by the EU, defended by the OECD and announced by the OECD itself. Joe Biden“.

The purple people believe that the PSOE will have no escape. They answer in the Treasury that “it can be discussed” … although referred to the committee of experts meeting to propose the catalog of reforms and which has until February 2022 to present its conclusions. Nobody delivers a letter before sitting down to play, everything has to be said.

And politically, United We can raise three things. The first, a breach. The second, a urgency. And the third, a commitment. By order, the intervention of the rentals and the improvement of Minimum Living Income (IMV) “which were signed for the 2021 Budgets and the PSOE has not complied”; later, the lower electricity bill, “we have proposed feasible and effective measures, in the short and long term, but the PSOE does not react”; and finally, a family law “that includes a universal minimum benefit for care”.

“I spend yes, but with rigor”

As happened last year, the budget negotiation will be used by United We Can to “start commitments to the PSOE that, if not, no matter how signed they are in the coalition agreement, they do not want to comply“, explain the purple sources.

On the socialist side, a spokesman for the Treasury explains that tax reform should have been addressed already, “but the pandemic and its consequent economic crisis upset the plans.” In other words, the PSOE is “responsible and now what is up is to consolidate the recovery, create employment and that the improvement of the economy reaches everyone.” That is to say, I spend yes but with rigor.

“The public would not understand that, having announced PSOE and United We Can that we were going to regulate the rent and improve the IMV, those agreements reached were not black on white before trading these PGEs“proclaimed Pablo Echenique this week.

United We can remain expectant about what the third vice president of the Government brings to the Council of Ministers on Tuesday. The strategy of the executive’s purple faction in the coming weeks will depend on the quantity and quality of urgent measures to lower the electricity bill that appear on Moncloa’s table. The negotiation of the Budgets has finally been launched, with quite a delay according to the wishes of the team to whom Díaz entrusted the mission, and with an emergency that can devastate the credibility of the purple.

“Everyone knows that only with a government that includes United We Can, the lights will be lowered,” their leaders repeated until they were ministers in January 2020. “Only we can look the electricity oligarchs in the face and tell them their privileges are over“.

So the price per kW / h was less than half. This week, it has exceeded 150 euros. And all the threats to “mobilize the people”, proclaimed by leaders like Pablo Echenique, have come to nothing: neither does the light go down, it only goes up, nor does anyone go out into the street, not even Teresa Ribera takes anything new out of her hat.

For now, only a promise from the president, a week ago in the press, that forces the bill to be brutally lowered has to be fulfilled. Reaching an annual expense “similar to that of 2018” requires a brutal cut in these four remaining months of fiscal year 2021.

“Lower the light already”

Sources from United We Can try to capitalize on that promise: “It doesn’t matter who announces it, or that they try to miss us,” explains a spokesman for the purple formation. “Everyone is clear that if not for our pressure within the Council of Ministers, the PSOE would not have done anything“.

And they remember that the descent of the VAT from 21% to 10% It was his proposal: today it is already in force, and Ecological Transition is studying extending it during 2022, as this newspaper has learned. And they explain that “if we are the first government that dares to cut back on ‘out of the blue benefits’ of the electricity companies is by United We Can. “Although the measure is included in those laws that follow their parliamentary course and await months of processing: “That is why we want them to go via decree”.

Yolanda Díaz has already insisted to Pedro Sánchez, in their weekly face-to-face meetings, that the tax route has already been exhausted with VAT and the abolition of the 7% electricity generation tax. And that now it is the turn of the companies to contribute “because they are benefiting from the rise.” The Secretary General of Podemos, Ione Belarra, has come to baptize it as “the war that the electricity companies have declared on consumers.”

While, Nacho Alvarez He has already met with María Jesús Montero at the Treasury headquarters to go down in detail the commitments outlined in his calls and emails during August and the first week of September. The Secretary of Economy of Podemos and the Minister of Finance must finish their accounts shortly: on September 28 is the last Council of Ministers if the government wants to comply with the constitutional mandate, which marks the last day of the month as the deadline for bringing the budget law to Congress.

ERC and La Mesa, a risk

Meanwhile, the PSOE also negotiates with the parliamentary partners. The 155 seats that add socialists and purple do not give to carry out the key rule of each year, and more in an exercise with 27,000 million foreseen in European funds, which must be channeled and which arrive, from milestone to milestone, as Spain fulfills commitments, many of those reflected in the same standard.

And in the negotiation with ERC and Bildu will be the touchstone. For starters, because Republicans want to see last year’s commitment that remains in a drawer fulfilled: Immediately pass the Housing Act, that this includes the intervention of the rental market, and that thus the Catalan norm that the Government itself has appealed in the Constitutional for “invasion of state powers.”

Without that there are no Budgets. But sources from Moncloa reject the challenge: “It does not seem that there will be changes with the new minister in relation to the position we had when the head of the department was Open them“, warns a socialist member of the Executive in conversation with this newspaper.” The PSOE will know, “they respond in United We Can, “Esquerra cannot return to Barcelona without that”.

Above all, because the budget negotiation coincides in time with the call for the call Dialogue, negotiation and agreement table. The internal tensions in the Government, with the Republicans confronting their partners in Junts, who do not believe in the conversations and make them responsible for “all Madrid defaults”, they do not help at all.

“The independence movement must be coordinated in Congress, we are 23 deputies who must work for Catalonia, not to give stability to a government in exchange for nothing,” he warned last Thursday Jordi Sànchez, leader of the party of Carles Puigdemont, to questions from this newspaper. “Esquerra invested Sánchez in exchange for the reform of the crime of sedition, and now that is not a priority, they have been deceived“, exemplifies a party spokesman to EL ESPAÑOL.

Meanwhile, on the side of United We Can, the alliance with ERC, Bildu and the rest of the nationalist left is fed. “We will focus on tax reform, the family law, the improvement of the IMV and the lowering of the electricity,” they point out, in a tactical move to not having to respond to your own failure. Intervening the rents will be in the coalition agreement and re-signed 11 months ago for the 2021 Budgets, but even that has not served for the PSOE to comply.

Hence the tactic of this course has changed, diverting the final threat to parliamentary partners. That allows Yolanda Díaz’s team to draw up a new catalog of commitments, despite the two not reflected in reality during this course.

Echenique, spokesperson for United We Can in Congress and in charge of the most threatening messages for the coalition partner, already made it clear last week at a press conference. The logical thing is “put black on white” the deployment of the rental price regulation and the improvement of the Minimum Living Income. Only in this way will there be confidence to address “in good conditions” the negotiation of the PGE with the PSOE.

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