El fracaso de la nivelación territorial de los servicios públicos fundamentales

Resum

The art. 158.1 CE has gone unnoticed for more than thirty years, being the fnancing system of 2009, now in force, the frst one that articulates, since 2011, the levelling allocations that the precept envisages. However, this constitutional mandate, beyond setting up a regional fnancial resource specifcally aimed at solidarity and redistribution, formulates the guarantee of a minimum level of provision of the basic public services. To that extent, it is a precept on rights, which guarantees a constitutional minimum of the rights served by these fundamental services and which, therefore, connects in full with the proclamation of the social and democratic State of law as a model of our legal order. What not only does not oppose, but is consistent with the rules of the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, often reduced to the mere demand of defcit and debt limits, which, however, the pact itself, as well as art. 135 CE, allow to overcome in certain circumstances, among which no doubt must be counted to harm or to know other demands Constitutional as the guarantee of social rights of the art. 158.1 CE, fully cohonest with the arts. 1, 9.2, 31.2, 149.1.1 and other nuclear mandates of the social and democratic State of law defning the Constitution. Despite this, the regulation of the Fundamental Public Services Guarantee Fund carried out by the LOFCA since 2009 and by Law 22/2009, of the system of fnancing of the autonomous regions, is not only insuffcient to fulfl the constitutional purpose of the appropriations service levelers but completely frustrates the content and scope of the constitutional mandate. Consequently, the next and necessary reform of the autonomous fnancing system must regain the aims and objectives of art. 158.1 CE, restoring the scope of this precept not only in the framework of such fnancing, but in the context of the rights proclaimed by the Constitution and in the constitutional regulation of public expenditure, with as much or more weight than the budgetary stability of art. 135 CE.