The Government has drawn up a Royal Decree that considerably reduces administrative controls and allows subsidies to be awarded to companies without contesting with the official objective of executing and quickly distributing the new European fund. In addition, it initially assigned power to a new inter-ministerial commission that would preside Pedro Sanchez with the majority of the ministers of the PSOE, in which the vice president was not Pablo Iglesias although yes the owner of work, Yolanda DÃaz.
As this newspaper has learned, this initial exclusion has caused strong irritation in churches, which has asked the president for a correction. And that rectification has taken place late in the morning of this Tuesday, when the minister spokesman MarÃa Jesús Montero has assured that the exclusion of Iglesias appeared in a draft of the Royal Decree, but that finally there will be no such interministerial commission, rather, the entire Council of Ministers will be in charge of the recovery plan and the European fund. Consequently, Iglesias has managed to win the battle after an initial exclusion attempt, although Sánchez retains the presidency and a structure that gives Moncloa iron control over the plan and the fund.
The call Royal Decree that approves urgent measures for the modernization of the Public Administration and for the execution of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, does not finally figure, after this internal storm, in the list of the Council of Ministers of texts approved this Tuesday, despite what was initially planned. He points out in his explanatory statement that “It is necessary to review the obstacles and bottlenecks existing in the regulations and in the procedures and instruments of public management and, once analyzed, it is necessary to undertake reforms that allow for a modern and agile administration capable of responding to the challenge posed by the execution of projects linked to the funds of the European Recovery Instrument “.
Deadlines are reduced, obligations to present previously mandatory reports from the Ministry of Finance are eliminated, the need to motivate urgency in administrative decisions is removed … There is a long etcetera of debureaucratization and the striking article 66.1 is included that allows subsidies with charge to the European fund without the need for public tender. It establishes that “in the case of subsidies related to the use of European funds whose purpose is to finance actions or specific situations that do not require comparative assessment with other proposals, the concession resolutions may be issued by order of submission of applications once the concurrency checks of the situation or eligible action have been carried out and the fulfillment of the rest of the requirements demanded “. The limit will be” until the credit is exhausted. budget figure assigned in the call “.
Government sources point out that a broad streamlining is necessary to be able to absorb in the remainder of the legislature the around 70,000 million extra that Brussels foresees for Spain within the 750,000 million program agreed last July.
The Spanish amount reaches up to 140,000 million if the loans are added and the Government wants to be the first to present a distribution plan next January, if by then the vetoes in Hungary and Poland have already been deactivated .
Unique window chaired by Sanchez
Everything will be channeled through a portal that will constitute the “single window” of the Plan, “facilitating requests and processing of procedures to interested parties, as a formal point of relationship with the Administration”.
Moncloa ensures total control, because the structure will be directed personally by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. In the text that the spokesperson has described as a draft, it was specified that “a Commission for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience would be created. presided over by the President of the Government and in which the Ministers of the government areas will participate more closely linked to the implementation of the European Recovery Instrument. “Its members were all to be economic ministers of the PSOE, with the exception of the Minister of Labor, Yolanda DÃaz, which did enter this commission. They will also form the Minister of Education, the Minister of Health, or even Secretaries of State and General Directors of Economy and Finance. The second vice president did not appear in principle, Pablo Iglesias, which finally will be. Neither does the first vice president appear, Carmen Calvo, despite its coordinating role in the Executive.
Monitoring will not be carried out by the economic vice president, Nadia Calviño, but also Moncloa through the president’s economic advisor, Manuel de la Rocha. “The Monitoring Unit, which will provide continuous information to the President of the Government, will carry out a political and strategic monitoring of the Plan to encourage all the actors to work for an efficient absorption of European funds and a full use of them, in coherence with the structural reforms they support “.
Yes, the Minister of Finance, MarÃa Jesús Montero, is entrusted with dialogue with the autonomous communities, and “consultative forums” with social agents and the private sector will also be created.
Government partners with companies
The debureaucratization of the Royal Decree is accompanied by an unprecedented support from the State in the private sector. To this end, the new regulations make it easier for the Government to associate itself with large companies, as this newspaper published last Monday, since they are the ones with the capacity to deploy telecommunications or renewable energy networks, which are some of the priorities set by the Union European for the distribution of money. They will be called Strategic Projects for Recovery and Economic Transformation (PERTE) and they will allow a “co-investment” association between the Government and, among others, large Ibex groups. The Royal Decree provides for the creation of consortiums or groups “as instruments of public-private collaboration for the execution of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Spanish Economy”. They will be “channels to face the projects of the magnitude that this Plan supposes, and in which the members will have jointly the consideration of beneficiaries of the subsidy, and will be jointly and severally liable with respect to the set of subsidized activities to be developed by the group, including the obligation to justify, the duty to reimburse or repayment of loan installments, and responsibilities for infractions, “says the text.
The Government plans to advance a maximum of 50% of the European money for these projects “prior to the execution and justification of the benefits provided in this type of business”.
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