Business refusal to trigger financing

Employers' associations warn that the Catalan quota will make many companies less competitive.

The business community opposes the privileged tax model that Pedro Sánchez has granted to the Catalan government as payment for the parliamentary support of the separatist parties for a multitude of reasons. First, because it was negotiated bilaterally and behind the backs of the other autonomous communities, which will undoubtedly be harmed by Catalonia's withdrawal from the common system.

Second, because the financial pact is intended to be used in the short term to prop up a government weakened by alleged corruption cases involving the current leader of the Moncloa government, but its practical application would have long-term consequences for the Spanish economy as a whole.

Third, because the agreement reached by the PSOE and PSC with the ERC not only means that the Catalan Government will have more resources from the common treasury than the other regions, but also restricts their fiscal autonomy by preventing them from lowering ceded taxes beyond a certain level arbitrarily set by those political parties. This straitjacket is specifically designed to prevent the Community of Madrid from continuing to deploy the successful low-tax strategy that has allowed it to emerge as the most dynamic regional economy in Spain. A forced reversal by the Sánchez government would severely reduce the competitiveness of our country's companies, and not just those located in the region presided over by Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

For this reason, the major employers' associations consulted by EXPANSIÓN warn that this central change in the financing regime of the autonomous communities, driven by partisan interests, in which neither regulated procedures nor the involvement of the affected administrations nor the consultation of taxpayers, has been followed, deepening the widespread perception among investors of alarming legal uncertainty in the Spanish economy. This is already reflected in the lower flows of productive investment that have arrived in recent months.

In short, business representatives flatly reject the idea that, based on theoretically leftist approaches and without any consensus, the solidarity between territories established in the 1978 Constitution is being undermined. This means condemning less advanced regions to lesser future development, as their inhabitants are left with inferior public services.