Credibility on the way budgets are run outside central administration boundaries is at stake. A most worrying feature as more than half of overall public spending comes under their realm.

The government has reacted by tabling a transparency and good governance initiative aimed to curtail such blatant abuses. Severe penalties are envisaged for those incurring in non-budgeted commitments or payments, overrunning debt ceilings or refusing to implement remedial plans to redress deviations. Salaries in local government will be capped by the State. Detailed information on each public procurement and subsidy award will be publicly available in an effort to deter excessive discretion often leading to unmitigated venality.

These moves to enhance integrity in public behaviour are highly commended.  But wiping out misconduct of those in power needs to be tackled at the root. Their decisions all too often are taken in contemptuous disregard to legal or financial objections raised by those civil servants daring to face reprisals. In the absence of countervailing mechanisms to curb such impunity, there is little hope to put the record straight.

* Juan Pedro Marín Arrese is an economist.

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By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | Politicians leading the Spanish autonomous regions and officials appointed by these politicians will be charged for criminal liability when their public finances end up with a deficit balance, and may be punished by a term of imprisonment. This measure, tailored to enforce control over the public deficit, will be inserted on a reform of the Government Transparency Law.

During an interview on Wednesday with radio broadcaster SER, in which the measure has been announced, the minister of the Treasury Cristóbal Montoro said that

“What is not good is the invoices kept in a drawer, the lack of transparency and the mounting figures of debt left unpaid [...] A political leader cannot spend beyond budgetary limits. If one wants to, he can increase taxes and then expect the taxpayers decision when elections come.”

This news comes in addition to the one that Mr Montoro had revealed on Tuesday, after the finance regional ministers’ meeting: the Spanish government will intervene regions in the case of systematic breach of deficit goals or payment commitments. According to the analysts of Ahorro Corporación Financiera,

“this decission should dispel doubts about future failures in the regions’ deficit goals.”

Furthermore, the ministry of Finance assured that

“the Spanish government holds itself responsible to avoid that any region has liquidity problems.”

The digital daily El Confidencial commented about Montoro’s words that they

“are almost the same of those of Merkel and Sarkozy in the most difficult times of Greece when it was needed to calm down the markets: we will not allow any country to leave the euro.”

Anyway, both moves are in tune with the austerity measures recommended and expected by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, for all the European Monetary Union member countries.

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