The Balearic Islands vote against the Spanish government's spending rule: "It's a smokescreen"

PalmaThe Balearic Government has voted against the 4% spending rule proposal for autonomous communities presented by the Spanish government during the meeting of the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy held this Monday in Madrid. The first vice-president and Minister of Economy, Finance, and Innovation, Antoni Costa, has criticized that it is a "smokescreen" by the central executive, which, according to him, "tries to simulate supposed normality regarding budgets".

As Costa lamented, the Ministry of Finance has not taken into account the increase in spending for communities imposed by the central government in areas such as salary increases for civil servants, dependency, healthcare, or education. "The government proposes a spending rule of 4%, even though just the salary increase for civil servants planned for 2027 is 4.5%. And to all this, we must add the increase in the budget in areas such as dependency or health, for example," Costa emphasized.

He also reproached the central government for not allowing the Balearic Islands to increase their spending level, even though this autonomous community more than meets "what the Ministry proposes as deficit and debt objectives not only for this year but also for 2030".

In fact, the executive has presented debt objectives for the autonomous communities, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), of 18.9% in 2027, 18.3% in 2028, and 17.7% in 2029.

In the Balearic Islands, Costa remarked, on March 31st of this year, the ratio to GDP is 17.5% after having reduced the debt by more than 500 million euros in the last two years.