The Government has started procedures to start 2026 with expanded budgets. The Council of Ministers approved on Tuesday an agreement that establishes the criteria with which the extension of the 2023 accounts will be applied, the last ones that received approval from Congress, to apply them from next year.
The Ministry of Finance reported the procedure by which it complies with Article 134 of the Constitution, by which, if there are no budgets in force, the accounts of the previous year are extended. This is the third extension of the 2023 Accounts.
The Executive returned from the summer vacation with the determination to present a draft General State Budget (PGE) for 2026, after two years during which the political situation and the fragile parliamentary majority which supports the Government prevented its presentation.
The objective is for these accounts to leave the table of the Council of Ministers no later than February, to be able to be endorsed by Congress in May. All this, if they obtain the support of Podemos and Junts, the two partners most reluctant to give the green light to the budgets.
Without deficit target and with an approved spending ceiling
The Executive has already twice approved the path to stability, which was rejected in both cases by Congress. At the Ministry of Finance, it is already considered that the procedure established by the budgetary stability law has been completed and, even if there are no deficit targets in force, it will comply with those agreed with Brussels, which limit the state’s red figures to 2.1% for next year.
The government also designed a record spending ceiling, of 216.177 million euros, or 8.5% more than that of 2025, which was not approved. The Ministry of Finance considers that this limit, which does not need to be approved by Congress, is “attractive” for the rest of the political parties, and predicts that it will have “the capacity to extend rights” and “consolidate the budgetary positions of the welfare state”.
The agreement of the Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday also gives instructions to the various departments to adapt the credits of the Recovery Plan which have been allocated to the needs of deployment of European funds during the year 2026, underlines the Treasury. The government has recently approved several modifications to the program agreed with Brussels, such as the addendum approved a few weeks ago.
Thus, “in order to maximize the absorption of the New Generation Funds, and on a temporary basis until the approval of the General State Budgets”, the Treasury requires that before initiating new expenditure files linked to the “European windfall”, they adapt their amounts.
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