• In a situation like the one we are experiencing, budget execution requires an added exercise of transparency, because it is about the destination of public money
The Popular Parliamentary Group has presented a brief (signed by the PP deputy secretaries Jaime de Olano and Elvira Rodríguez, the deputy to the GPP general secretary, Isabel Borrego, the deputy GPP spokesperson Mario Garcés, the GPP budget spokesman, Víctor Píriz, and the popular deputies Agustín Almodóbar, Miguel Ángel Paniagua, Carolina España and Eloy Suárez) to the Committee of the Budgets Committee in which he demands to meet urgently the Committee on Budgets to debate and vote the appearance of the Minister of Treasury with the objective of reporting on the budgetary impact of the measures adopted to deal with COVID-19.
For the GPP, the Committee on Budgets has to start meeting both for the debate of non-law proposals and other parliamentary initiatives, as well as to substantiate the pending appearances requested by the Popular Group: the Minister of Finance, the president of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIREF) and the Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenses.
As the Popular Parliamentary Group recalls in its brief, the Committee on Budgets was established on February 7, 2020 and since then not a single session of it has been held, despite repeated requests to its president to did, as has been the case for a long time with the other commissions.
According to the Popular Group, since the Bureau of the Committee on Budgets has not been approved in said Committee, the competence to decide whether an appearance should be included in an agenda for debate, continues to correspond to the plenary session of the Committee on Budgets and not to most of the Bureau of it.
The convocation of the plenary session of the Commission, based on Article 42.1 of the Regulations, corresponds to the President of the Commission, who will carry it out on his own initiative or at the request of two Parliamentary Groups or a fifth of its members, a requirement that This letter amply complies with the signature of nine Deputies of the Popular Group who are part of said Commission.
In addition, sections 2 and 3 of article 68 of the Regulations indicate the agenda of a Commission, which may be altered by agreement of the latter, at the proposal of its president or at the request of two parliamentary groups or a fifth of the deputies members of the same, this requirement that also concur in this writing.
Therefore, in this case, it would simply be a matter of including an issue on the agenda, which has been qualified by the Bureau of the Chamber and which complies with the regulatory procedures that allow it to be in a position to be included in the agenda. of the Commission, since the Table of Congress approved on February 18 the schedule of sessions of the commissions which included the holding of sessions of the Committee on Budgets on April 23, May 26 and June 17.
For all these reasons, the GPP considers “fundamental that the authoritarian modes be reversed, the obstructionist practice of the groups that support the Government to prevent or hinder the full exercise of the work of the opposition, since if they do not do so, they will be greatly affected seriously the rights of the deputies to defend their initiatives ”.
Lastly, the Popular Group stresses that “in a situation such as the one we are experiencing, in which the Government of the Nation has extraordinary powers, exhaustive parliamentary control is more necessary, and budget execution requires an added exercise of transparency , because it is about the destination of public money ”.
