Montero adjusts accounts with the municipalities in the Budgets after the municipal rebellion

The Minister of Finance, Maria Jesus Montero, adjusts accounts with the municipalities in the draft General State Budget for 2021 after the defeat it suffered last September in its municipal decree. The accounts sent to the Congress of Deputies for next year do not include the unconditional fund of 5,000 million that she herself considered and not the 3,000 million claimed by the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (Femp) in the last few weeks. There is no trace of this aid that was part of the decree that was overthrown last September by a large parliamentary majority because the bulk of mayors considered that Montero invaded their powers and seized their resources.

Regarding European funds, the project allocates 54% of the total planned in 2021 to autonomous communities, close to 19,000 million and 4% to local corporations, 1,483 million.

The mayor of Zaragoza and spokesman for the Popular Party in the FEMP, Jorge Azcón, predicts a new municipal revolt against the minister. “It cannot be understood that not even the insufficient 3,000 million from the COVID fund for city councils are not in the budget. The forgetting of municipalism will produce more social fracture,” he declared to this newspaper.

Sources from the Ministry of Finance indicate that after the parliamentary defeat it has been decided to suspend the fiscal rules for 2020 and 2021 and allowing local corporations to use their remnants – some $ 12 billion in bank accounts that they could not use because of the budget stability law – which largely solves the problem. “What about those who have no remnants?” Asks Azcón, pointing out that the queues to get food skyrocket in all cities.

Montero herself declared to the Efe Agency after losing the parliamentary vote on October 4 that she was willing to create a fund that compensates municipalities without remnants or that are in crisis due to the fall in income after their parliamentary defeat. “They will have to have a fund that allows them to compensate for this drop in income, that allows the incorporation of transport aids and that allows to update the deliveries on behalf of the municipalities as we did with the autonomous communities”. But they are not in the budget project nor are there any signs of a new decree on it.

“These budgets are unfair and do not correspond to the fight we have given in the cities against the Covid. The hunger lines, the police, public transport, all this effort is made by the municipalities and it is not reciprocated by Pedro Sánchez” says Azcon. In his opinion, “it is only explained from the rematch, from evil lose. Many mayors of Spain mobilized to stop the injustice that was being processed in Congress and now they pass the political bill on us. It is incomprehensible that they don’t want to help those who help the most to the neighbors who have the worst of it. “

What happened also contrasts with what was reported on October 19 by the president of the FEMP, the socialist Abel Caballero, that in addition to the unlocking of remnants, he had filed “a request to the Government for a specific fund to support COVID for an amount of 3,000 million euros for which a distribution agreement is finalized, which provides for two criteria: one main, which would contemplate distributing 2.800 million depending on the population of the municipality, and another, which would distribute the remaining 200 million in function of lack or shortage of remnants “. “The transport fund of up to 400 million euros is another of the issues that will be considered,” said the Socialist mayor.

The Budgets do foresee an increase in financing to local entities in 2021 from 19,555 million in 2020 to 19,931 million euros in 2021. There are 375 million, which is equivalent to 1.9% growth compared to the 13.8% general increase in Budgets if European funds are included.

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