“It’s almost over.” These are the three words in which a source close to the negotiations between the PSOE and Sumar describes the state of the agreement with the government, which began behind the scenes since the morning after the election and which, according to them, is only one week old. deadline for signing. The only pending point, “the 1%,” stuck from the beginning: the reduction of the working day by law.
This was indicated by sources on both sides of the negotiating table. The Socialists were the main interested parties in the agreement being closed as soon as possible so that they could focus “only” on the agreement with the Junts. In Sumar, on the other hand, they know that more delay means more pressure, but they are not ready to jump without announcing the reduction of working hours, the internship statute, the bank tax, etc.
This Monday, precisely, will be one of the decisive days for the agreement and, above all, for the distribution of roles for each person in the new executive. For the two formations that presented themselves in the election as an almost inseparable tandem, the government program The adjustment is more complicated than the names of the ministers, where there is a consensus on each side.
“At the moment, we are in the contents. The structure of the government will be decided based on the agreement,” Ernest Urtasun, spokesman for Sumar, said this Monday. In the words of the MEP, this agreement with the government “must include (…) the reduction of working hours, deletions are more expensive, and the recognition of Palestine as a state,”, two of the major demands of Yolanda Díaz.
Some of the issues that have been closed, the sources confirm, are the agreement of the Scholarship Statute (key for the Ministry of Labor), the reduction of domestic flights, the change of public transport conditions, or the reform of regional financing. Most of them signed last week.
The negotiating team of the vice president, led by Secretary of State Nacho Alvarez, has been meeting since August with the PSOE delegate, Minister Mary Jesus Montero, to close the demands of the investiture and also tie it to the general state budgets. Sources close to the conversations between the two groups detailed how, for weeks and up until a few days ago, the Finance Minister returned all of Sumar’s proposals as “crossed out red.”
“PSOE makes the excuse that Junts and PNV, because they are more conservative, will not accept such a social program, but this is a lie,” sources from Sumar’s management concluded a week ago about the agreement. Now, continuing the conversations, the same person explains that “progress is available, but the PSOE does not want to go into detail” about the working day, the bank tax, and the update and deployment of the Housing Law, which was approved at the end of the last legislature.
The problem that Yolanda Díaz finds herself in is that the PSOE, at the end of the day, knows that it can rely on 31 votes when Sumar’s unconditional supporters arrive at the time of investiture. Unlike the Unidas Podemos of Pablo Iglesias, which forced a repeat election in November 2019 and then entered the government, the vice president linked his entire campaign to the vice presidency, and now he can’t back down.
For this reason, and although October 31 is set as a deadline for closing the coalition, for Sánchez, the talks with the ERC, which sources described as “serious” but “smart,” Above all, those focused on the new Amnesty Law, the possibility of a self-determination referendum, and the keys to autonomous financing in Catalonia.
