The Spanish parliament has rejected for the second and final time the fiscal path designed by the Government as a necessary prerequisite for drafting the 2027 Budget, which would be the first and also the last of the legislature, given that the country has been operating for three years on the extended 2023 budget approved in 2022 by a different Parliament. The vote yielded the exact same result as the…
Fernando G. Urbaneja | When thinking about how to define the current legislature now that it has surpassed the two-thirds mark of its journey, choosing a definition is no simple task. Terms like “broken,” “complicated,” “uncertain,” “useless,” “sterile,” or “fragile” could serve… but I settle for something more generic: “strange” (rara), understood as a singular exception, as unique—though it could well be a prologue to what we have yet to…
The Government spent half of 2025 arguing that a new budget was not necessary because “the 2023 accounts—approved in 2022, during the previous legislature—are good for the economy,” in the words of President Pedro Sánchez. However, throughout the year, a large part of that rollover was modified, creating a practically new budget. Furthermore, the bulk of it was done without going through Congress. This is according to data from the…
Parliaments emerged, to a large extent, to authorize the fiscal impositions of monarchs. It was unreasonable to impose fees and taxes without those affected by them having either a voice or a vote. Hence, the oversight role of parliaments remains one of their essential tasks. Controlling the state accounts every year and demanding accountability for what has been done or left undone in each fiscal year is a parliamentary task…
The 2023 State General Budget (PGE) was automatically extended for the third time this January 1st. This occurs while Pedro Sánchez’s government prepares to present and attempt to pass new public accounts for the 2026 fiscal year in Parliament during the first half of the year—an outcome that, at this stage, appears unlikely. During the final Cabinet meeting of 2025, the Government approved an agreement establishing the application criteria for…
This Thursday, Congress rejected the stability path (which includes deficit limits for Public Administrations) proposed by the Government until 2028. This defeat was expected in Moncloa (the seat of government). However, it casts bad omens over the future of the General State Budgets (PGE), turning them, in fact—as El Español points out—into a chimera. Junts, the parliamentary group of the fugitive Puigdemont, followed through on its threat after breaking with…
“Not even the ministerial order to start preparing the Budgets has been given,” warned Cristina Herrero, president of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), highlighting the lack of reliable deficit and debt forecasts for next year, as well as non-financial expenditure. “None of the necessary milestones for the Budgets that should already be underway have been met at this time,” Herrero warned, with the added uncertainty of defense spending…
Pedro Sánchez announced yesterday that Spain will increase its military spending by €10 billion this year, although only 20% of that figure will be allocated to the purchase of equipment and materials, while 35% will go to raising the salaries of the military. With this increase, Spanish spending on security and defense will reach 2% of GDP this year, totaling more than €33 billion. Sánchez thus contradicts himself, once again,…
Spain, Belgium, and Austria are the only eurozone countries that have not yet submitted their accounts for next year. However, Spain is the only one of the three countries that does not have a caretaker government and cannot blame the delay on an electoral call. Countries were required to submit their budget plans to the European Commission by October 15. In a joint statement, the finance ministers of the eurozone…
The Government was planning to put to a vote the same budget spending ceiling that sank in July this Thursday in the Congress of Deputies, but anticipating the same result, it has decided to rectify. The Government withdrew yesterday from the agenda the vote on the stability path, thus avoiding chaining another parliamentary setback and making another defeat visible in the chamber. “There is room for negotiation,” they explain in…