(Politics) ERC presses the Executive for Catalan and amends the budgets in the Senate

[Askor lml]

The majority of the legislature cracked yesterday in the Senate. ERC got off the alliance bandwagon and presented amendments to the budgets to pressure the Government with the Audiovisual Law, whose wording approved by the Council of Ministers does not satisfy the promise of protection quotas for the Catalan language in the agreed terms. In any case, the 16 amendments presented are not related to the Audiovisual law, they cannot have it, a paradoxical situation that is the result of the link between the two regulations that Esquerra adopted in the budget negotiation.

Negotiations continued until late yesterday and Minister Montero takes the agreement for granted

The consequences of this disagreement, however, are not irreversible and the Government and Esquerra admit that there is still time to reach an agreement. In fact, the Executive and the Republican group were negotiating on the horn, until six in the afternoon yesterday, when the voting of the vetoes of the budget in the Senate began and they continued later. The Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, was, despite everything, convinced that the agreement was imminent, but at the close of this edition that council had not taken place. Various sources pointed out, however, that no time was wasted yesterday and progress was made, although not enough for ERC to understand that the Government has complied.

In Moncloa they congratulate themselves that the accounts have exceeded the vetoes and, at most, are delayed a week
Republicans criticize that the Audiovisual bill approved by the Council of Ministers does not comply with the agreement and is "insufficient to protect Catalan." For this reason, with these amendments - which affect investments in the Bages, the Ebre Delta, the Maresme, the Tarragonès or Lleida, among other areas, they include a clause to comply with the planned investments and the incorporation of a covid-fund of 13,000 million euros - they intend to "make it clear that support for Spanish accounts is not guaranteed," explained the Republican spokesperson in the Senate, Mirella Cortés. That is, they would decline if there was an agreement on the Audiovisual law before they are voted in the Senate.
Beyond the negotiation on this controversial law, at the end of the Senate plenary session, Moncloa highlighted the importance of the budget project exceeding the vetoes yesterday, for which they already took for granted that there will be new accounts for next year and Pedro Sánchez will thus guarantee budget stability to exhaust the legislature. In the Government they thus warn that even if ERC managed to approve some of its new amendments in the Senate, it would only delay the approval of the budgets for a week, since the project would have to return to Congress for its final ratification. "There is margin", they insist in Moncloa. Both to reach an agreement with Esquerra on the Audiovisual law and, above all, so that the budgets see the final green light before the end of the year.

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