Mazón and Compromís join forces to reject Montero's debt relief for Valencia

The proposal by Vice President María Jesús Montero to forgive 11.21 billion euros of debt to the Valencian Community within the more than 83 billion for the whole of the autonomous communities has not pleased either the ranks of the Generalitat of the popular Carlos Mazón, who attributes it to Catalan independence blackmail, or Compromís, which supports the Sánchez Government in the Congress of Deputies.

Mazón himself considers the central government's proposal for the next Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF) to be a "trap" because "it is neither a reduction nor a restructuring" on Wednesday, and he has criticized the fact that the Executive "condemns the Valencian Community" by not including in the agenda of this long-awaited meeting the change in the autonomous model, the transitional equalization fund and because " its underfinancing is not taken into account in this calculation that it has presented " for the debt forgiveness.

Mazón recalled that 80% of the debt of the Valencian Community, the largest in relation to GDP per capita and the second in total volume after Catalonia, comes from underfinancing. The Valencian president insisted that in the Government's proposal that has been made public "its underfinancing is not taken into account in this calculation" , which means that despite the amount in the total of the autonomous debt, it has a very limited effect.

A very similar argument to that of the spokesperson for Compromís in Congress, Àgueda Micó, who reflected that the position of the left-wing Valencian party is "very critical" and "contrary" to the criteria used by the ministry of María Jesús Montero to distribute the debt forgiveness. For the party that has supported Sánchez in Madrid, this proposal only takes into account the criteria related to the financial crisis of 2008 and leaves aside the Valencian "underfunding" .

The Valencian Generalitat has a total debt of 59 billion euros, of which 47 billion are attributed to the debt caused by the lower resources for social spending than most of the autonomous communities during more than a decade of the expired regional financing system. With the proposal from the Treasury, only 19% of this debt would be reduced .

The Sumar deputy has also called on the Valencian PP and PSOE to form a "common front" and demand that the Executive take into account the situation in Valencia because otherwise her party will not support this proposal that "does not solve the financial situation or the underfunding" and has warned of the need to comply with the investiture agreements, in which the change of financing model was one of its demands.

Micó also approached the PP by criticising the fact that the PSOE has only spoken with ERC for this agreement , which, according to her, benefits Andalusia the most, where the first vice-president is a candidate for the PSOE and therefore "benefits her".

The debt forgiveness proposal has caused a schism between the traditional Valencian partners of PSPV and Compromís in the Joint Commission of Les Corts for financing, as well as breaking the common front of demands of the major parties for financing and debt relief. Positions that, it is also true, always depend on the position of each party in Madrid and whether it is in La Moncloa or not .

The Minister of Finance, Ruth Merino, met with parliamentary spokesmen on Tuesday to discuss their position in the meeting on Wednesday and this division was made clear by the support of the Socialists for Montero's proposal, arguing that the tax forgiveness benefits the Valencians.

Merino, however, said that this "supposed forgiveness" does not contribute anything positive to the citizens of the Valencian Community, because not a single euro of it could be used to spend more on health or education and, of course, it does not affect the reconstruction after the flood at all."

He also expressed pessimism regarding the CPFF, which is a "sham" and a "rigged" agreement that will be approved regardless of what happens at the meeting due to the current voting system, where the agreement is approved only if a community votes with the Government of Spain. "We cannot disagree more with either the form or the content. We will repeat as many times as necessary that the CPFF had to discuss the reform of the financing system and the equalisation fund," he reiterated.

The Joint Commission included Francisco Pérez, director of the Valencian Institute for Economic Research (Ivie) , considered the representative of the experts and economists who have been advising the Generalitat on this matter for years. For Pérez, the proposal that the Government announced on Monday offers, in the part related to compensating for the effects of underfunding - the so-called Phase 3 - some "surprising" results for the Valencian Community.

For the director of Ivie, if the assumption of debt were distributed according to the "debt justified" by underfinancing , the figure corresponding to the Valencian Community would be equivalent to 21.4% of the 83 billion announced for all the autonomous communities , that is, some 17.8 billion euros compared to the 11.2 billion that appear in what will be taken to the CPFF.

"Therefore, the difference between applying a criterion such as the one we believe would be justified and the sum of phases proposed by the Ministry is substantial. If the criterion of the Valencian Community were applied, all communities should be given the same percentage of their justified debt forgiven. And now what they are giving are very different percentages, the lowest being that of the Valencian Community," concluded Francisco Pérez.