‘A theft from citizens’: Spain hits 1,000 days without a new budget
Spain reaches 1,000 days without approving a new national budget
Poinews.com – Spain has crossed a politically significant threshold: 1,000 days have passed without the adoption of a new state budget. Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing coalition, formed by PSOE and Sumar, has governed throughout the current legislature using the budget approved in 2022 for the 2023 financial year.
National budgets are central to economic policy because they determine planned public expenditure and set government priorities. Their absence does not halt the administration, since existing accounts can be extended, but it limits the government’s ability to present a fresh, comprehensive plan for spending, investment and reforms.
Extended accounts become the norm
Sánchez returned to office after the 2023 election without a parliamentary majority. The government maintained that the election result made it difficult to bring a new budget proposal before the Congress of Deputies. Yet budgets were not submitted in either 2024 or 2025, despite repeated commitments by the prime minister and former finance minister María Jesús Montero.
In June, Sánchez also excluded the possibility of a new budget being approved in 2026. The result is an unusually long reliance on the 2023 accounts, rather than the annual budget process normally used to define national spending choices.
The situation carries additional political weight because Sánchez previously criticised the practice while in opposition. Addressing Mariano Rajoy, then prime minister from the centre-right Partido Popular, Sánchez argued that governing without a budget meant not truly governing.
“To govern without a budget is not to govern at all.”
What Spain’s Constitution allows
Article 134.3 of the Spanish Constitution requires the government to submit its budget to Congress at least three months before the preceding budget expires. The same article permits the old budget to remain in force when a replacement has not been approved.
That provision has enabled the current government to continue operating, but legal and budget specialists argue that it was intended as a temporary safeguard rather than a long-term substitute for parliamentary approval.
César García Novoa, professor of financial and tax law at the University of Santiago de Compostela, said the current use of extensions stretches the underlying purpose of the rule.
“The regulation, without spelling it out, is designed for an extension of one year at most; it is an emergency mechanism.”
García Novoa noted that other European states also have procedures for extending public accounts. However, he said they are generally linked to brief and exceptional periods, citing Belgium’s government crisis as an example.
Opposition calls it a democratic anomaly
Fernando Navarrete, a Partido Popular member of the European Parliament who sits on its budget committee, has called the 1,000-day period a democratic anomaly. In his view, the previous understanding was that an extension should last a single year; if no parliamentary majority can then approve new accounts, elections should follow.
“Until Sánchez, the understanding was that the extension lasts for one year. If after that there is still no majority to approve a budget, you have to call elections.”
Navarrete said his party would seek to amend the law to prevent a comparable situation if it takes office after elections expected next year. He argued that citizens have been deprived of the opportunity to have their representatives decide how much money is spent and where it goes.
“A theft from citizens, who have not been able to decide through their representatives how much public money is spent and on what.”
The criticism is not simply about parliamentary procedure. A budget is also the vehicle through which a government can make its policy choices visible, establish funding levels across ministries and show how it intends to finance new commitments. When it relies on older accounts, programmes that were not originally included may need to be funded through exceptional channels.
Housing and crisis measures
The Ministry of Finance rejects the claim that the lack of a new budget has left citizens unprotected. Officials point to measures adopted in response to the effects of conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, particularly measures connected to higher energy prices.
Housing has become a particularly important test of the government’s ability to act. Spain’s Centre for Sociological Research identifies access to housing as Spaniards’ leading concern. The government has allocated €7 billion to the State Housing Plan covering 2026 to 2030.
Because that housing plan was not part of the 2023 budget, it cannot simply be financed through the extended accounts. The government must instead use extraordinary mechanisms to provide the money. Navarrete argues that such tools were designed for different circumstances and should not become the standard route for implementing major public policy.
He also maintains that the lack of updated accounts has reduced Spain’s capacity to react to international disruption, since new challenges may require spending decisions that were not anticipated when the current budget was drafted.
European commitments and credibility
The prolonged budget impasse also affects Spain’s position within the European Union. García Novoa argues that continuing with the extended 2023 budget constrains Spain’s ability to set out reforms expected by the EU and damages its standing in Brussels.
Since 2024, EU fiscal rules have required member states to submit medium-term plans aimed at ensuring sustainable public finances while supporting investment and structural reform. Spain has presented such a plan, but Navarrete says the absence of an updated national budget makes it harder to demonstrate in practical terms how the country will deliver it.
“We cannot show how we are going to fulfil it.”
He says the European Commission must therefore rely on its own economic forecasts when monitoring Spain. Although Brussels has expressed concern about Spain lacking approved budgets for 2024, 2025 and 2026, Navarrete believes the response has remained limited because the matter is viewed largely as an internal political dispute.
For the opposition MEP, that assessment overlooks wider consequences: he argues that Spain is failing to meet European commitments, spending beyond its means and leaving difficult fiscal choices for the next government. The government, meanwhile, insists that it has continued to use available powers to respond to urgent social and economic pressures.
As Spain enters another year without a newly approved budget, the disagreement is likely to remain a defining issue in the country’s political debate: whether the extension mechanism is a necessary response to parliamentary fragmentation, or evidence that the annual budget process has been allowed to stall for too long.
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