First meeting between Nación and CABA to reach an agreement on the claims about co-participation

The Minister of the Interior of the Nation, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro, received this afternoon in his office in the Casa Rosada a delegation of the government of the city of Buenos Aires led by the Buenos Aires chief of staff, Felipe Miguel, and the Minister of Finance, Martín Mura, to try to reach an agreement on the percentage of the participation that intends to receive the district of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta after the cut ordered by the national government.

It was the first meeting after the parties met in the courts of Comodoro Py on Thursday of last week. On that occasion, the Supreme Court gave him 30 working days for a conciliation to be concluded and ruled that if they do not reach that point of confluence, he could issue a precautionary measure requested by the Buenos Aires government.

After this initial meeting at the offices of the Ministry of the Interior in Balcarce 50, it was agreed that every week this mechanism of dialogue between the technical teams on both sides will be repeated. “This issue is long,” they said in the corridors of La Rosada close to Minister De Pedro.

The updated amount that the administration headed by Rodríguez Larreta is demanding to be returned to him by the Nation is 120 billion pesos. In addition, the tribunal ordered that they report weekly on the progress of the negotiations.

The conflict began when the Government cut more than one point of partnership to CABA at the time when it was decided to transfer security functions to the Buenos Aires orbit. First there was a decree, 735, of September 2020, and then a law passed in December of the same year that established a pruning of resources. This led the Larreta government to request the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation to declare the rules unconstitutionality and the payment of a sum to compensate for the loss suffered since then.

For its part, the National State questioned the legitimacy of decree 194/2016 issued by then-President Macri in January 2016, a few days after taking office, and by which the percentage received by the Buenos Aires district of the mass of joint funds had been raised from 1.40 to 3.75. For the government headed by Alberto Fernández, this percentage was set in a completely arbitrary way by the macrista administration. Faced with the protest of some governors, Macri later set it at 3.50 in 2018.

“With the DNU, the Government took 1.18% of the City's share share, which went from 3.5% to 2.32%. Of this 2.32%, 1.4% corresponds to the historical level that was in place before the transfer of the Police. Then, the Executive Branch understands that once the law that transfers all security-related powers is completed, the Federal Capital will once again have the same percentage of resources that were in force until the beginning of Mauricio Macri's government,” explained a tax specialist from Juntos for the It changed when Alberto Fernández's first decree was known.

The national government insists that these demands “should not be channeled through justice but into a political agreement”. The Secretary of Provinces, Silvina Batakis, who was at the meeting in the Court last week, took to counter the Buenos Aires request the “fine” numbers that Nación made. “We want a conciliation but not a surrender,” they say from the Interior. They emphasize that from both sides there is a “willingness to dialogue” and that they have the support of several governors on the equitable distribution of resources derived from co-participation.

The four ministers of the highest court, Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, Ricardo Lorenzetti and Juan Carlos Maqueda, had been present before the Court. The national government was attended by De Pedro and the city of Buenos Aires was attended by the head of government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta; his chief of staff, Felipe Miguel, his Minister of Justice and Security, Marcelo D'Alessandro and the prosecutor, Gabriel Astarloa.

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