eight scenarios and up to € 47,300 million for Catalonia

by time news

BarcelonaA long multidisciplinary exercise coordinated by former councilor Antoni Castells to find out what impact a change in political model would have for Catalonia. The result, apart from what keeps thethe status quo current, it is shocking: it would increase funding by almost 4 billion euros in a scenario of weak federalism to increase revenues by more than 47.3 billion with independence, although in this case should also be taken into account the increase in spending to finance the services now paid for by the state.

The study was presented this Monday at the Palau de la Generalitat, with the presence of the director of the Institute for Self-Government Studies, Joan Ridao, and two of the authors, Núria Bosch and Antoni Castells, took part. with a closing by the Minister of Economy and Finance, Jaume Giró. All participants have tried to dodge political positions and approach the work as a solid theoretical research. Economic and financial consequences of the different scenarios of the Catalonia-Spain relationship is the title of a multidisciplinary work in which nine renowned academics have taken part, analyzing from a political, legal and economic-financial point of view the possible scenarios of Catalonia’s relationship with the State, from maintaining the current situation to independence, going through different degrees of federalism, bilateral relations, confederalism or the application of the Basque foral system.

Antoni Castells did not want to comment on the scenarios analyzed by the study, which began in 2016, but he did draw a red line: “Catalonia cannot be left out of the EU and the eurozone”. And he made another point: some models, especially the one of independence, have a cost to get there, and the end result must be noticeably better than these transition costs.

There is agreement, however, that the ruling of the Statute marks a before and an after. “From 2020 there is provisionality in the rules of the game,” said Castells, who believes that with the ruling “the political pact was shattered.” Councilor Jaume Giró recalled this when he emphasized that the financing agreement closed by the then councilor Castells provided for its review every five years. It was time to review it in 2014, but we are still waiting for the update, the current councilor lamented.

Giró recalled that in the French elections, Marine Le Pen where he got the most votes is in the most unhappy territories, some of them overseas. “Not because they are far-right, but because they feel excluded.” In Catalonia, he said, this discontent was articulated first with the League, then with regionalism and finally with sovereignty. His wish is that this work “gets where it needs to go, that Catalan ministers read it, that these scenarios can be debated in the Senate.” But the final reflection is not optimistic: “We all know this will not happen. That is why more and more Catalans are losing hope of reforming the state ”.

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