The budgetary collaboration of the Madrid City Council with United Nations entities that provide humanitarian aid has changed with Almeida’s second term. The draft Budget for the year 2025 eliminates all direct subsidies to UN entities, which were common during his first mandate, to grant them through a mechanism that adapts to the needs of the moment.
The item for International Relations decreases by 5.6% due to the reallocation of these amounts to direct concessions. The budget project indicates that the withdrawal of the first allocation to the UN is due to “the decision to redirect municipal international relations and to this end, it has been decided not to continue with the nominative subsidies that were granted to different agencies,” explains the consistory in its Budget project for 2025.
From the area of Social Policies, Family and Equality, Promotion and International Cooperation, they clarify to Somos Madrid that the aid they assign in 2025 will be granted directly and not through nominative subsidies. “Chapter 4 of the Budget contains items intended for aid to foundations and non-profit entities, among which are humanitarian aid,” indicates a spokeswoman.
The system has already changed this year and an example is the 250,000 euros granted to Unicef by the City Council for the distribution of cash financial aid to vulnerable households in the south and east of Ukraine. In the two previous years, aid worth 800,000 euros was delivered to the same organization through the aforementioned mechanism.
The City Council explains that subsidies are granted with this new dynamic to be able to address humanitarian crises that are impossible to foresee when budgets are drawn up. “They are direct concessions due to the supervening nature of the crises. They are assigned based on the needs that arise, it is the instrument that is best suited to channel aid and the one provided for in the regulations for this reality.”
“Madrid is a city of solidarity and this is reflected in its 2025 Budgets. They maintain the 2024 budget allocated to international cooperation, close to 9 million euros, and includes subsidies for humanitarian aid, supporting projects for an amount close to 1.5 million euros,” they add.
This change in mechanism had not been noticed by the PSOE, which in a previous version of this information denounced the disappearance of this aid to UN organizations and assured that this did not comply with the Strategic Subsidies Plan of the Madrid City Council, valid until 2027. , and which foresees an expenditure of 500,000 euros per year throughout the four years of validity.
From the Social Policies area, it is indicated that the humanitarian aid actions that we finance are decided within the ‘Humanitarian Action Strategy 2019-2026’ of the Spanish Cooperation and the strategic cooperation framework of the Madrid City Council 2022-2025.
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