The PNV and Junts will join their votes this Thursday with those of PP and Vox to repeal the tax on extraordinary profits for energy companies generated by the rise in prices caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as reported by Euskadi Irratia. The approval of a PP amendment to the Government’s fiscal package, which in principle had the support of right-wing Basque nationalism, will eliminate said tax, which will make it difficult for the first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, to fulfill her commitment his left-wing partners to extend it via royal decree-law. The vote has been resolved with 183 votes in favor of the amendment and 166 against.
The renewal of the energy tax has been one of the main conflicts for the approval of the fiscal package with which the Government wants to balance the General Budgets of 2025. Both the PNV and Junts denied their support for Montero’s reform if this tax was not removed . In exchange, both groups agreed to make the bank tax permanent.
The Treasury accepted and removed it from the tax package. And he achieved a commitment from both to subsequently support this tax as long as two conditions were met: that it is collected and managed by the provincial treasuries with powers to do so (Basque and Navarre) and that companies can deduct investments in “decarbonization” from the base. taxable to calculate it.
The Government encountered opposition from the other groups with which it supports itself, those who pull the Government towards the left. EH Bildu, ERC, Podemos and BNG have opted to maintain the tax, and demanded it to support the fiscal package. In fact, Podemos requested a meeting of all the groups in which to negotiate how to maintain the tax and reform it to adapt it to the approaches of the members of the majority that supports the Government.
But both the PNV and Junts stood up to the Government and the rest of the group in the first meeting. Podemos did not attend the second meeting, held this Wednesday, due to the absence of the two parties without which any negotiation would be incomplete, as will become visible this Thursday.
Podemos has accused PNV and Junts of voting under the demands of Repsol, a company chaired by the party’s former president, Josu Jon Imaz, and which has a significant presence in Tarragona.
Aitor Esteban confirms the vote “no matter how much Mrs. Belarra screams”
The PNV spokesperson has confirmed with the amendment debate already started the ‘yes’ of its five deputies to the modification proposed by the PP. “No matter how much Mrs. Belarra screams and insults others, things are not going to change. “We are the ones who are being responsible and providing balance,” he said in reference to the general secretary of Podemos in statements to the media in Congress, who has accused the PNV of being “Repsol’s puppies.”
“We are talking about many jobs and Treasury income in an issue in which investments must be made because otherwise those energy companies are going to disappear if we believe in decarbonization,” Esteban said. “We are helping them with ‘pertes’ and European funds, and we impose a tax on them, it is contradictory,” he added.
The PNV spokesperson has considered Podemos’s position “absolutely reckless” “unless they want to go to elections and win their particular duel with Sumar.” “It is not understood that the Government is threatened knowing that there is no majority on the left,” he added. Esteban has assured that the PNV can “present things that could obtain an alternative majority to the Government”, but that it does not do so to “give stability to the Government.” “Some partners only play their game, their ideology. And this issue is very serious,” he concluded.
Minutes later, it was Junts spokesperson, Míriam Nogueras, who announced that her deputies were also joining PP and Vox. “We will not put the work in the Tarragona countryside at risk, nor the strategic investments in Catalonia, nor the powers” of the Generalitat, he said in statements to the media. “The PSC and ERC will have to explain why they put all that at risk in exchange for a headline and a tax that they know is ‘fake,’” he concluded.
The Government at the crossroads
The Government now has to decide how to move forward in fulfilling its commitments. This Wednesday he once again reiterated to ERC, EH Bildu and BNG his intention to extend the tax via royal decree-law.
The PNV movement makes Montero’s intentions difficult. The Basque party insists that taxes cannot be approved via royal decree-law and, when repealed, the renewal that the Government intends is unfeasible. The Treasury sources consulted by elDiario.es maintain that the approval of amendment 54 of the PP this Thursday is “reversible” in the form of a tax, that is, a temporary tax.
But beyond that, the Government and its left-wing partners have another problem: this royal decree-law must be validated by Congress within a month and is not guaranteed the votes of the PNV and Junts.
In the Treasury they are aware that the conflict is not in this Thursday’s amendment, but in that decree “does not have the necessary support” to be validated.
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