The battle in the investiture bloc over the tax on energy companies stopped momentarily last Thursday, when the Government committed to Podemos to negotiate a new tax – although without defining under what terms – but it threatens to resume and to return to strain the relationship between the Executive and its partners in the final stretch of the year. This Wednesday, the PNV – which is essential to approve a new rate – notified President Pedro Sánchez that He does not feel “neither obliged nor questioned” by this agreement with the purple ones. And, therefore, it opened the door to “stand up” and vote against a decree that includes a tax on energy companies that is not negotiated with them, even if that also implies tearing down measures to face the consequences of the DANA from Valencia.
This was stated this Wednesday by the spokesperson for the Basque nationalists in Congress, Aitor Esteban, during Sánchez’s appearance in the Lower House to speak, precisely, about the management of the central government to care for those affected by the flood. Esteban maintained his usual calm tone during his speech, but that did not prevent him from returning to one of the arguments that he already defended last week, when the Government’s tax reform was on the verge of being overturned due to disagreement between the left-wing partners and of the right regarding the tax on energy companies: that, since the majority that supports the Executive is so diverse, Moncloa does not have the capacity to embark on overly ambitious reforms in matters such as economics.
“Some parliamentary groups that support the Government do not understand that, if the Executive continues, It will be because we all settle for a lowest common denominator“, Esteban snapped in a veiled reference to Podemos, the party that took the longest to give in and confirm its support last week for the tax reform. And it was not the only message to the purples and, subsequently, to the Government. , since the spokesperson warned that, “if what these groups intend is to impose their agenda on others, the PNV is going to stand down.”
Esteban, in fact, made an express reference to the tax on energy companies, whose final design will be negotiated between all the parliamentary partners of the Executive, as agreed by Moncloa with Podemos, and insisted that the PNV will vote against any decree that includes a tax in this sense if it is not agreed with them. “We have always made it clear that these figures evaded the economic concert system and generated a bankruptcy in the model,” and “today they could be the energy industry, tomorrow the automobile industry, and the next day health care,” snapped the spokesperson for the Basque nationalists.
The conditions set out by the PNV, however, may also indicate a way out for the Government to achieve its support for a new energy tax rate. In short, what Esteban proposed is that his group is committed to a design of the new tax similar to the one that has been agreed with the Executive for the new rate on extraordinary banking profits, whose management will be in the hands of next January 1. of the Basque Government. The key to this agreement is that, by adapting the rate to regional legislation, The PNV may reduce the banking tax for entities that operate in Euskadi. And the same could happen with the tax on energy companies if it were redesigned along the same lines.
In fact, Esteban stated that what the PNV wants is to “review the tax system as a whole, and in particular the corporate tax,” instead of “tax patches.” And, to delve into the doubts that the tax on energy companies produces, the spokesperson assured that “we have to achieve a fair tax system instead of improvising over and over again gimmicky proposals that have more ideology and propaganda than effectiveness.” “If in times when revenue is on the rise we continue talking about a crisis, the wrong decisions will be made,” and “either we agree on the measures” that the next decree by DANA includes, including the tax on energy companies, “or this “maybe we will vote against,” Esteban warned.
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