The package of measures that the Council of Ministers will approve this Saturday will last until December 31 and not only for three months, as has happened with the first plan approved by the Executive, which has lasted three months (expires on December 30 of June). The announcement made by Pedro Sánchez in Brussels, after the celebration of the European Council, occurs while PSOE and United We Can continue without an agreement to close the text.
“There will be a royal decree law”, the President of the Government has sentenced. But less than 24 hours before the Council of Ministers meets, the government partners continue negotiating because there is no agreement on the measures. One of the points of friction is whether or not to establish an aid check for families, and if so, what income threshold to establish to grant it. The PSOE, reluctant to the measure, would bet that in case of giving it, it would be for the most vulnerable incomes. United We Can press for it to be granted to higher incomes, to the middle classes.
“We are going to fight so that compensation for families is incorporated into the decree for tomorrow, Saturday,” said Secretary of State for Employment and Social Economy, Joaquín Pérez Rey, one of the people who is negotiating on behalf of United We Can, given that is Yolanda Díaz’s number two.
Sánchez has avoided commenting on the specific measures, but he has anticipated that his government team “to protect families that have become much more vulnerable due to the rise in the cost of living.” Of course, without specifying whether or not he bets on the check helps. The measures that are approved will be announced by the President of the Government himself, who will appear on Saturday in La Moncloa after the Council of Ministers. At United We Can they had already assumed that he would be the one who would make the anti-crisis plan profitable.
The Government, in any case, is forced by the rise in prices to establish a duration of the package of measures of six months and not three as was the initial forecast. In recent days, however, in La Moncloa the door to this option has already been opened. “We know that inflation is high, but this government knows very well for whom it governs and there are other actors who want to maintain a status quo and other privileges. We govern to protect those who have become much more vulnerable due to the rise in the cost of life”.
A message that affects the idea that the Government is determined to tax the enormous profits that energy and oil companies present, but that this charge is not expected to be included in the decree. Moreover, the Treasury already points to 2023 as the moment of entry into force of the surcharge, since it rules out the path of the decree law, so the process will be longer. The reason, as this newspaper has already published, is that this option would open the door to complaints by the affected companies.
Both PSOE and United We Can defend that the anti-crisis plan must be ambitious, but the purples pressure the socialists to be “much more ambitious”. Sánchez has anticipated that the plan will be “coherent with what we have been doing: protecting families, consumers and citizens who have become more vulnerable, with specific aid to affected sectors and selective reductions in certain taxes” such as electricity .
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