The vice president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and the mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano, together with the spokesman for the Popular Party at the institution and the mayor of Zaragoza, Jorge Azcón, yesterday proposed to the rest of the political groups a decalogue of Extraordinary economic measures to alleviate the situation that Spanish local entities will have to face in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
As explained by the vice president of the FEMP, "we have participated electronically in the meeting of the Board of Spokespersons and from the PP we have transferred a set of measures that we hope we can agree on so that they can be included in the Royal Decree Law that the Government is preparing."
The Decalogue has been studied among all the members of the PP Governing Board in the FEMP and supervised by the PP Deputy Secretary for Territorial Policy, Antonio González Terol.
For García Urbano "it is about extraordinary economic measures to face an extraordinary situation that has been generated after declaring the state of alarm". For this reason, he is "confident that the Pedro Sánchez government will adopt many of our approaches as they seek to alleviate the economic tension that local entities are suffering in the face of this health crisis situation."
Along the same lines, the PP spokesman at the FEMP, Jorge Azcón, explains that "the municipalities should be able to use their surplus to be able to assume the economic consequences they are bearing." Thus, the Mayor of Zaragoza has emphasized that "it is not a whim of local entities but an urgent need to be able to use our positive remnants to alleviate the situation of our neighbors and to be able to continue to have muscle to withstand this critical moment."
Among the measures requested by the Popular Party is the request to modify the Public Sector Contracts Law, in order to make a new regulation of long-term contracts, that is, service concession contracts with the possibility of of exclusion of VAT and industrial profit.
Likewise, the suspension of the terms of the administrative jurisdiction within the scope of the execution of public contracts has been requested, especially the terms of execution and terms of completion of contracts, exceptionally so that these services can continue to be provided by local entities.
The decalogue of measures also includes the request that the Government make the spending rule more flexible both for local entities that are in debt and for those that have a surplus.
García Urbano and Azcón have defended the need for the Executive to establish extraordinary measures or additional mechanisms to support liquidity so that the most indebted municipalities can attend to the resulting economic consequences. To do this, they believe that interest loans financed by the Official Credit Institute (ICO) could be arranged.
Along the same lines, the PP in the FEMP has proposed that the Government of Pedro Sánchez be requested to approve economic measures or extraordinary credit lines to face or mitigate the economic effects that companies and other economic agents are suffering from the outlook. that has been generated in Spain as a consequence of the expansion of the coronavirus.
Both mayors have insisted on the need for the Government “to be in solidarity and understanding with the municipalities, since, being the administration closest to the citizens, it is the one that will have to make the greatest economic effort to respond to the needs of the residents of their municipalities ”.
