Green light for Catalonia’s stability plan until 2014 with the condition of evaluating the drug prescription fee

Barcelona (ACN).- The Catalan Parliament has the decree allowing the increase of the Catalan Government’s debt in order to implement its economic and financial plan for 2012-2014 with the votes from the ruling Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition, Convergència i Unió (CiU), and the abstention of the People’s Party (PP), which runs the Spanish Government. One independent MP supported the decree as well. The rest of the opposition voted against, as they consider the plan to jeopardise social cohesion in Catalonia. On Thursday morning, the CiU and the PP agreed to start an analysis process to assess the effects of the one-euro drug prescription fee and the Spanish Government’s measures combined. Depending on the light shed by the analysis and how the Catalan Government meets its deficit targets, both parties will “evaluate the continuity” of the drug prescription fee in 2013. With this commitment, the PP agreed to abstain and allow the decree to be approved. This decree is needed for the sale of the public companies Aigües Ter-Llobregat, Tabasa and Túnel del Cadí, a measure included in the financial plan. This plan is needed to reduce spending and increase revenue in order to meet this year’s deficit targets.

After days of discussion, this morning the CiU and PP have reached an agreement to have the decree approved, therefore enabling the budget stability plan’s implementation. It is not the first budget agreement between both parties this term, as the CiU and PP have  previously agreed to approve the Catalan Government’s budget for 2011  and 2012. In fact, the PP had already agreed on the details of the one-euro drug prescription fee three months ago, but the Spanish Government decided later to implement its own measures increasing the price citizens have to pay for their drugs bought at the chemists. Now the PP wants the Catalan measure to the reconsidered, as it makes Catalan citizens pay for the Spanish Government’s measures and the drug-prescription fee approved by the Catalan Government.

In fact, on Wednesday, the PP’s leader in Catalonia, Alícia Sánchez-Camacho said before the Catalan Parliament that the drug prescription fee should be cancelled. The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, answered Sánchez-Camacho that doing so would be “the greatest irresponsibility of the Catalan parliamentary history”, as the Catalan Government would thus have serious difficulties meeting its deficit targets. Mas also stated that despite the deficit targets being  too strict and the EU and the Spanish Government imposing meeting them too quickly, the Catalan Government is obliged to meet them, like it or not.