The Council Defends Reduced Investment in Alicante Due to European Fund Decline

On Thursday, the 2025 budget project was presented. In total, the regional accounts will amount to 32.291 billion euros. Regarding territorial distribution, Alicante will have more than 416 million euros at its disposal, a lower amount than received in the previous year, when investments totalled 70 million euros more.

The Council has defended that these are consistent with the demographic weight of the province within the Community. In this regard, the Minister of Finance and Economy, Ruth Merino, states that "the percentage of territorialised investment is slightly higher than last year and corresponds with the population weight."

Regarding the reduction in investment in the province, the Generalitat has blamed the significant growth in debt interest and the collapse of the 'Next Generation' European funds. The Ministry of Economy indicates that these budgets "are heavily conditioned by the near disappearance of all income from the Next Generation EU Funds in territorialised investment by provinces."

Sources from the ministry report that in just two years, the decline has been 74% in European funds, dropping from 1.194 billion "from the previous Council to the current 302 million euros." Of all these, "the vast majority were Next Generation funds," they detail. Between 2023 and 2025, the decline has been 889 million euros, so the Generalitat would only receive one out of every four euros that came via Europe two years ago.

Merino has criticised this situation of "underfunding" that "hampers our financial capacity" and expresses that "we face these two circumstances that condition our investment capacity," both in the overall budget and in the three provinces.

Despite this 70 million euro drop in investment, the ministry makes it clear that "the investment effort is proportional to the population weight of each of the three provinces, slightly increasing in percentage in Alicante and Castellón."

Regarding the debt, it now reaches 59.498 billion euros, according to the Bank of Spain. The ministry criticises a disproportionate increase in interest payments, which will be 1.143 billion euros in 2025, 24% more than last year and "171% more since 2023," details the regional head of the Economy and Finance area.

To these two issues, another is added, the disaster of the floods that devastated part of Valencia. The Council has allocated almost 3 billion euros in a supplementary budget just for the DANA, which adds to the more than 29 billion in expenses projected by the Generalitat.