The president of the PP, María José Sáenz de Buruaga, has asked President Miguel Ángel Revilla to demand from Pedro Sánchez the urgent convocation of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council to debate the distribution criteria of the fund of 16,000 million authorized by the State to make against the expenses derived from the Covid-19, because the system imposed unilaterally by the Ministry of Finance is unfair.
Buruaga has applauded that the Government of Spain has finally set up an extraordinary fund to compensate the autonomous communities for the health and social spending that they have had to assume as a consequence of the health crisis and the reduction in income and the fall in economic activity caused due to confinement measures, but he has also believed that these resources are insufficient to finance all expenses because the real impact of Covid on the budgets of the autonomous communities has not been taken into account.
At the same time, it has warned that the distribution criteria imposed by the Ministry of Finance are unfair and harm Cantabria, by not allowing to cover all the expenses that the Government of Cantabria says it has assumed, although it has not yet accredited Despite repeated requests from the PP.
For the popular leader, it must be in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council where the distribution criteria of this fund are discussed and decided, in agreement with the autonomous communities and not unilaterally.
In his opinion, to avoid conflict, the distribution criteria of the current autonomous financing system, known and accepted by all, should be maintained. "There is nothing to invent," he added.
For this reason, he has demanded that Revilla, at the next meeting of regional presidents, demand that Pedro Sánchez call the Council, with a clear agenda.
The president has asked the president not to trust the PSOE or the economic response to the crisis or the demand for funds from the State if it does not want the result to be a disaster, as has happened with the health crisis.
“Here everyone says that the distribution is unfair but nobody does anything. The Minister of Economy goes to a meeting and is silent and we have to wait for the media to question the vice president to announce that he is going to send a letter four days later. This issue already sounds familiar to me and is exactly the same as the 2017 VAT refund, which is in Sánchez's drawer, ”said Buruaga. "We do not want them to say, we want them to do," stressed the president, who insisted that this claim cannot be left to the PSOE because then a euro will not come to Cantabria.
The popular leader has urged Revilla to demand in first person that the Council's agenda also include an agreement so that the autonomous communities do not have to assume in 2022 a negative liquidation of the financing system derived from the current reduction in activity and the decrease in income through taxes and the urgent modification of the rules of budgetary stability, a particularly important measure in a community that systematically fails to meet the deficit target. For this, he has offered him the support of the Popular Party.
In addition, he has urged him to demand that the Government of Spain not confiscate more funds from the autonomous communities and pay what he owes to Cantabria, because it cannot be that what he gives with one hand he takes away with the other.
Thus, he has insisted on the demand that the State allow municipalities to fully use their remaining cash, a surplus that would allow injecting more than 450 million euros into the regional economy, almost triple the amount that corresponds to Cantabria. with the current distribution criteria of the non-reimbursable fund of 16,000.
In addition, it has once again demanded the return to the autonomous community of the 42 million corresponding to the liquidation of the last 2017 VAT annuity, which is money that is from Cantabria and that the Sánchez Government refuses to pay. Buruaga recalled that the amount of VAT is equivalent to the extraordinary fund for health expenses included by the Government in the Shock Plan, where, in addition, this claim has been collected from the Government of Spain at the request of the PP.
"It does not seem very coherent that the Prime Minister is calling the autonomies and the political parties to a pact for reconstruction and at the same time forcing us to go to court to claim what is ours and what corresponds to us," he concluded.
