Two years after its entry into force, the tax on extraordinary profits of energy companies is now history. This Wednesday, Congress repealed the decree approved a month ago by the Government to extend this tax, and it did so thanks to the fact that PNV and Junts decided to break the majority that supports the Executive and vote on this issue together with PP and Vox, who opposed the continuation in force of a rate that affected only five large multinational companies that, in 2023, had a combined profit of almost 10.5 billion euros.
The PSOE, Sumar, ERC, EH Bildu, Podemos and BNG voted in favor of the validation of the decree – that is, that the energy tax remained in force – that is, the Government and its progressive and left-wing nationalist partners. However, the breakup of the investiture bloc on the right flank prevented the Executive from reaching a majority in Congress, something that was not a surprise either, given that PNV and Junts had been publicly rejecting for weeks extending the tax on the profits of energy companies. and, in fact, they stood up to the Ministry of Finance when it summoned all its allies at the end of December—at the request of Podemos, ERC, EH Bildu and BNG—to try to agree on a common text that would save the lien.
Given the rejection generated by the measure in PNV and Junts, the Treasury has not made too many efforts in the last month to force these two groups to change their position: there has been no public pressure on their part, nor have they been offered compensation. in other areas to get your vote. However, this Wednesday the minister of the branch, also first vice president María Jesús Montero, assured that the Executive has “done everything humanly possible to try to reconcile the positionsreach consensus and that this measure could make its way”, although he also admitted that “parliamentary reality is complex.”
“We see how more and more denialist positions of this climate change are making way around the world to reverse the any measure that involves decarbonizing the economy. There is an attempt to cancel or delay the climate commitments of governments: you saw it in the first decisions that President Trump made,” Montero also warned during her intervention in the Congress. The words of the first vice president are not only a political statement, but rather they prepare the ground for the next fiscal battle that the Government will have to fight: the one related to its intention to raise taxes on diesel, a measure that the Treasury has had to delay due to the possibility that some of its allies will overthrow it.
Since everyone was already clear from the beginning of this Wednesday’s plenary session that the tax on energy companies was going to fall, the debate became the perfect scenario for the nationalist allies of the Government They will engage in their particular battles with their direct adversaries. This was what happened, for example, with PNV and EH Bildu, since the abertzale They charged very harshly against the former, ensuring that they do not do “politics at the dictates of the CEO of Repsol”, who is precisely Josu Jon Imaz, former president of the PNV.
“For EH Bildu, the country comes first and then there is the party,” quite the opposite of the PNV, which puts “the party above the interests of the country,” the deputy said in this regard. abertzale Oskar Matute in response to the Peneuvista parliamentarian Idoia Sagastizabal. Previously, she had denounced the “demagogy” that, she said, entails approving a tax on the extraordinary profits of energy companies instead of reforming the corporate tax, and justified the PNV’s rejection of it by stating that the tax It cannot be managed by the Basque provincial estates.
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