Budget: Spanish minority government fails in parliament with deficit target

Stand: 00:47 | Duration of reading: 2 minutes

D under Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez suffered a first major defeat in parliament less than two months after being educated. A clear majority on Friday rejected the new government's budget deficit target: 172 MPs voted against and only 88 voted in favor. The vote is not legally binding, but raises doubts as to whether Sánchez can govern the next years without a majority in parliament.

Sánchez had the deficit target of 2.2% under the Conservative government's predecessor at 2.7% to increase gross domestic product (GDP) in order to have more room for government spending. The Socialists have 84 votes in Parliament, so the project was apparently little supported by representatives of the other parties. The government now wants to present the parliament with new deficit targets in a month, according to his spokesman Isabel Celaa

Sánchez became the head of the government on June 1 following a vote of no confidence against his conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy. Apart from the Socialists, the Linsk Podemos party, the Catalan separatist deputies and the Basque nationalists voted against Rajoy. It was "a negative coalition, not a governance," said Antonio Barroso of the consulting firm Teneo Intelligence, the failure of the Socialists in the parliamentary vote on Friday. The Spanish parties were therefore waiting for new elections "at any time".

Politician Fernando Vallespin of the Autonomous University of Madrid said that Friday's parliamentary vote showed "the loneliness of the government, the low level of parliamentary support". The Sánchez government has set itself the goal of governing until the end of the legislature in June 2020. To do this, however, it must draft a budget for 2019 in the coming months and submit it to parliament .