Politics

The Catalan company Abertis, which owns 90% of Sabsa, denies the accusation stated by the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, that they made a poor investment. Abertis emphasised that between 2005 and 2012, Sabsa invested $12.6 million, and paid $38.6 million to hold the airports and $9.4 million in taxes. However, Abertis accepts the nationalisation of its subsidiary company, which manages the international airports of La Paz, Santa Cruz and Cochabamba. Two other Spanish companies have been nationalised by Morales in the last 10 months. The Barcelona-based multinational believes that the nationalisation process will be “based on international law” and therefore it will receive fair compensation. On Monday, Morales announced the immediate nationalisation of Sabsa. The Spanish Government will review its relations with Bolivia.

The Catalan Government and most of the political parties have criticised the Spanish Government’s project to reduce local powers. Furthermore, the Catalan Vice-President, Joana Ortega, emphasised the “unfair vision” of local governments given by the Spanish Finance Minister. Ortega underlined that in Catalonia, most of the town halls ended 2012 with a budget deficit of 0%, which is “not in line with the mismanagement image given” by the Spanish Government. Furthermore, while the Spanish Government is aiming to reduce the number of councillors earning a salary to only 18%, Ortega reminded them that in Catalonia only 10% are now earning a salary. Political parties in Catalonia criticised the Spanish Government for taking away power from the government level closest to the citizens.

The Catalan Executive has provided details of how it will adjust €4 billion of its 2013 budget in order to meet the deficit target imposed by the Spanish Government. Besides the 1 billion tax increase already announced, the Catalan Executive will have to implement further budget cuts. On Thursday it will present its austerity plan for 2013 to the unions, which will affect all public employees, in order to save €700 million. As last year, public employees will not receive 7% of their annual salary, corresponding to part of the summer and Christmas bonuses. According to the unions, 3,000 civil servant posts will remain empty and 10,000 substitution contracts will not be signed.

Following a report by its own legal services, the Spanish Government is considering appealing against the ‘Declaration of sovereignty and the right to self-determination by the people of Catalonia’, approved by the Catalan Parliament two weeks ago. This declaration states that, following the historical rights and the free self-determination of the people, the people of Catalonia are sovereign and therefore able decide on their own future and organise a self-determination vote to decide on Catalonia’s hypothetical independence from Spain. The Catalan President stated that, before the self-determination right of the people, “there are no rules, laws, constitutions or possible interpretations”.

The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, organised a summit with top representatives from all the public powers involved in the fight against corruption and fraud to exchange ideas and come up with a set of measures. Political parties were not invited and some of them have protested. After the meeting, Mas explained that the attendees agreed to transform the Transparency Agreement from 2001 regarding the funding of political parties into a law in order to enforce it. Furthermore, the Catalan Government will allocate more resources to the judicial powers investigating the main corruption cases. The attendees agreed to compile the initiatives discussed in a document and meet again in two weeks’ time.

The Cercle d’Economia, the main Catalan economic forum open to businesspeople and academics, has published an opinion note on the political context following the last Catalan elections. In the note, the Cercle asks the Spanish Government “to talk” about the Catalan self-determination and “to reform” the Constitution accordingly. The Cercle does not explicitly back an independent Catalonia but it supports a deep reform of Spain’s territorial organisation and the finding of a negotiated solution for both parties, which may be reached through a legal referendum. In addition, the Cercle asks for a review of Spain’s internal distribution of the deficit targets among government levels and to increase those of the Autonomous Communities.

Oriol Pujol, the Secretary General of the CDC, the Liberal party within the Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition (CiU), “fully denies” the accusations and hopes he will not finally be indicted. However, he stated that “nobody within the CiU will be an obstacle to Catalonia’s self-determination process”, indicating that if he is formally accused of influence peddling in the end, he might temporarily step down from the political front-line. The anti-corruption prosecutor suspects that Pujol participated in the plot to irregularly allocate licenses for technical vehicle inspection garages. After the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, and the leader of the Christian-Democrat side of the CiU, Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida, Oriol Pujol is the coalition’s ‘number 3’ and Chairman of the CiU’s group in the Catalan Parliament.

The President of the Catalan Government and leader of the Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition (CiU) is organising a summit to define new initiatives against corruption. The meeting will be held next week and will gather together the main representatives of the Catalan Parliament, the Supreme Court of Justice of Catalonia, the Catalan Ombudsman, the Catalan Court of Audit and the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia. Political parties are not invited, as the summit is thought to be “complementary” to Parliament’s actions. The Catalan President will ask the attendees to provide him with ideas so that he can channel them and put them on the table for a wider debate. In the last few months, many corruption scandals have affected politicians in Catalonia and the rest of Spain.

The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, and the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, met on Thursday for the first time since Mas was re-elected president and the Catalan Parliament approved a Declaration of Sovereignty of the People of Catalonia. The meeting lasted 45 minutes and none of the participants officially commented afterwards. However, Mas, once in Barcelona, referred to it during a literary prize ceremony. The Catalan President underlined that “we will always have to go and explain ourselves” regarding Catalonia’s self-determination process. According to him, this proves Catalonia’s “willingness to always talk”. Besides, Mas also explained to the monarch that the current deficit targets imposed on the Autonomous Communities are not allowing them to guarantee the Welfare State.

Andreu Mas-Colell, the Catalan Finance Minister, has sent a letter to the European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Olli Rehn, to denounce the fact that the Spanish Government is proportionally imposing much stricter deficit target on the Autonomous Communities than that of the Spanish Executive, obliging them to implement a much larger and faster adjustment. In 2013, the Spanish Government allowed itself a 3.8% deficit target and imposed an objective of 0.7% on the Autonomous Communities. In Spain regional governments manage 36% of the total public spending, including the main public services such as healthcare, education and social affairs. The Catalan Government manages an even larger share, as it has more devolved powers.

On Monday the Spanish Minister for the Economy, Luís de Guindos, stated that Spain might internally redistribute its total deficit target among the different government levels in order to give more breathing space to the Autonomous Communities, which have been taking on a large part of the budget adjustment. However, the following day, the Spanish Finance Minister, Cristóbal Montoro, ruled out this possibility if Brussels does not give greater flexibility to Spain and increase its total deficit target for 2013. On Wednesday, after the contradictory messages, the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, confirmed Montoro’s approach. In 2013, Spain has been given a total deficit target of 4.5%: 3.8% is for the Spanish Government (responsible for 50% of public spending) and 0.7% is for the Autonomous Communities (responsible for almost 40%).

The Catalan Government criticised the Spanish Executive’s obstacles to Catalonia’s own external relations action, as “in a globalised world” this “is not a caprice”, but essential to be recognised at an international level and to attract foreign investment. The Catalan Minister for the Presidency, in charge of External Relations, Francesc Homs, criticised the Spanish Government’s “old-fashioned” way of understanding diplomacy and gave the example of spending in 2012 “€330,000 on cutlery and table cloths”. Homs emphasised the main commercial focus of Catalonia’s external offices and their “modesty”. The Catalan Government has a total of 5 political representation offices – including for the European Union – and 34 commercial offices.

The Catalan Government has been insisting on the need to internally redistribute deficit objectives in Spain, splitting them in a fairer way in order to better pair the responsibility of the management of basic services with their share of Spain’s total deficit target. Currently, the Spanish Government is keeping most of the deficit allowed by the European Union for itself, despite the fact that it only represents 50% of Spain’s total public spending, and it has forced regional and local governments to a Draconian budget adjustment. The European Parliament asked EU Member States to internally split deficit targets in a fair way for the benefit of the public services aimed at the citizens. Now, the Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Luis de Guindos, talked about distributing deficit targets “equitably”, in front of the European Commissioner for Monetary Affairs, Olli Rehn.

The number of unemployed people had reached 885,000 individuals by the end of 2012, a record high, with 110,000 more jobseekers than a year ago. This means that Catalonia’s unemployment rate increased from 20.5% to 23.9% in the last twelve months, breaking the previous record of 22.8% from the third quarter of 1985. In the whole of Spain, unemployment reached a rate of 26%, while a year ago it was 22.85%. It increased by 13.1% over the last twelve months, adding 691,700 more jobseekers to the list. Spain reached a historical high of 5.97 million people being unemployed.