Loli Benlloch | València (EFE).- Vox’s break with the PP and its departure from the Valencian Government is three months old, in which both parties have maintained a relationship that they describe as “cordial” and there have been few dissonant votes in Les Corts, although The litmus test will be the 2025 regional budgets.
Carlos Mazón, who became president of the Generalitat after closing the first agreement with Vox in Spain after the regional elections of 2023 and dismissed the three Vox councilors the same night that Abascal’s party announced his departure from the Executives regional, now faces the challenge of carrying out its second budgets.
Parliamentary arithmetic forces the PP to seek agreements to save accounts that this year have reached close to 30,000 million euros: its 40 deputies from Les Corts leave it ten short of the absolute majority, and it is no longer guaranteed the 13 votes of Vox, that has gone from being “loyal partner” to “constructive opposition.”
Dissonant votes in Les Corts
Only four days after the unilateral breakup of Vox, this formation gave a wake-up call to the PP Consell by demanding that a star measure, the decree law simplifying the Generalitat, be processed in Les Corts as a bill – it is now in the amendment process, which may change its content – for not having had time to study it.
At the beginning of September, the PP was able to push forward in Les Corts the salary increase for public employees thanks to the votes of the left, since Vox voted against because it included the salary increase for public officials, although Abascal’s party did. supported the decree law on tourist housing.
In the debate on the state of the Comunitat in mid-September, PP and Vox mutually supported most of their proposals, with exceptions: Vox did not support the popular one on autonomous financing, which was not approved, and the PP did not vote for the from Vox on immigration, language policy or green taxes.
Despite everything, the current relationship between PP and Vox is “very cordial,” the general secretary of the PPCV and one of the negotiators of the government pact, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, assures EFE, who explains that on many points they continue to seek agreements and believes that Vox’s opposition is “much more democratic” than that of the PSPV, focused on “blocking” initiatives.
The relationship “continues to be quite direct, continuous” and “cordial,” the Vox ombudsman in Les Corts, José María Llanos, tells EFE, who defends that they are fewer deputies than the PP, but “necessary” for the “regeneration” policies. economic and social and freedom”, so they continue negotiating issues that the left would “hardly” take on, although there are issues on which they are not going to “give in.”
The budgets, with immigration as a key
The next step now is the budgets of the Generalitat for 2025, which must enter Les Corts before October 31 and which Vox asks to be negotiated with them beforehand if their vote in favor is intended; The PP affirms that the negotiation will begin after presenting the bill and will be “with all political formations.”
Immigration is a “nuclear” issue for Vox to support the budgets – which do not include items for the reception of immigrants or aid to entities that “collaborate with the illegal immigration mafias” -, a vote that the party will decide uniformly. , but taking into account “the attitude” of the PP in the different autonomous communities.
In recent days, Vox has registered several initiatives on immigration in Les Corts: one to expel all “illegal” immigrants from the Valencian Community and close reception centers, and another to carry out tests to determine age of unaccompanied foreign minors. The PP disagrees with the first, but views the second “favorably.”
Approve or extend budgets
For Pérez Llorca, “many of the policies of change that have to continue in those budgets are policies that have had the support of Vox”, so “it should not be very difficult to get their support”, although you have to go “ game by game and moment by moment.”
In any case, if the current budgets finally had to be extended – something that has not happened since 1989 -, the popular leader does not believe that it would diminish the strength of the ‘Government of change’ that “is more consolidated every day”, and highlights that there are mechanisms to continue working for the “transformation” of the Community.
Llanos points out that Vox’s “firm will” is that new budgets can be issued by 2025, although extending the current ones would not be “a drama” nor would it cause an “institutional crisis”, and finally he is grateful that Mazón has conveyed his will to maintain the laws they approved together, including that of Concordia. EFE