Parliament has rejected the State General Account for the first time in a severe blow to the budgetary policy of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez by governing with extensions and tricks such as the diversion of European funds for pension payments, according to the opposition, which won the vote.
PP, Vox, and Junts have imposed their majority and approved a report that rejects and returns to the Court of Auditors the report it made on the State General Account in an unprecedented parliamentary initiative. Therefore, it rejects that the public accounts of 2024 presented by the Government, the last audited year, reflect “the true image” by 177 votes in favor and 168 against. Its author was the then Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, currently replaced by Arcadi España.
The Court of Auditors issued a favorable report, as it traditionally does, despite detecting multiple irregularities including the use of European funds for pension payments. “The Court of Auditors should never have approved this General Account,” agreed the spokespeople of PP and Vox, Pilar Alía and Pablo Sáez. Alía emphasized the abuse of budget modifications without parliamentary control and “the diversion of European funds for pensions.” Sáez listed, on his part, a dozen tricks in the general account that, in his opinion, should have been enough for the Court of Auditors to be tougher. Also, Junts’ spokesperson, Josep María Cruset, was critical of the “budget irregularities” and the practice of governing with extensions that, in his opinion, distort the true state of public accounts. Therefore, Parliament does not approve the State General Account, an unprecedented result in Spain’s recent economic history.
The PP leader, Cuca Gamarra, promoter of the blow within her party, highlighted on her social networks that “the Parliament from which Sánchez has stolen the vote on the budgets throughout the legislature today recovers its budgetary function and overturns the Government’s policy. Sánchez DOES NOT have the confidence of Parliament.”
Gamarra had already stated before the summer that, if this vote against the General Account occurred, it would have political value equivalent, in her opinion, to Parliament rejecting a Budget Law. In any case, this is the first time the current Congress of Deputies can pronounce on the Government’s budgetary policy, and its position is rejection.
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The opposition had already managed to pass a rejection report in the Joint Commission of the Court of Auditors of Parliament, but the endorsement of the report this Thursday in the plenary session represents a clear censure of the Government’s budgetary policy.
The socialist spokesperson in the debate, Josep Paré, criticized the opposition: “You know there is no problem with the accounts.” And he emphasized that “autonomous communities also have extended accounts.” The socialist deputy also claimed that the European Commission accepts the use of European funds for pensions as “temporary treasury operations” that do not imply, in his opinion, “a diversion.”
The Court of Auditors already experienced an unprecedented division, and the members proposed by the PSOE, including the president, Enriqueta Chicano, imposed not including the proven use of European funds as an irregularity, although they did accept that it was a use that caused legal “uncertainty.”
