The Fiscal Policy Council that monitors Spanish regional governments is meeting today under less tense circumstances than the last time they sat down. But the problems the Council will discuss remain the sae. The Ministry of Finance wants to talk about debt, and the regional governments will argue for a relaxation of their deficit objecive timeline and even propose new objectives for those who did comply already and those that have not.
Nobody involved in the meeting nor the national or regional governents can boast of triming their deficits in 2012. They only met budget by creative accounting tricks. The Ministry of Finance delayed paying corporate tax refunds and regional governments deferred payments that they owed service providers until 2013. Everyone is asking for laxer deficit goals, but nobody is talking about how to carry out pending reforms. This issue should be the focus of today's meeting.
