Ukraine has approved four budgets during a war: Pedro Sánchez uses a distant war as an excuse not to present them

There are countries whose governments continue to fulfill their legal obligations despite being fully affected by a war situation.

Hero syndrome, the dangerous drift of narcissism suffered by Pedro Sánchez
Pedro Sánchez uses the 'no to war' to cover up a growing railway chaos

Yesterday, the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) approved the Israeli government's budget for 2026. It did so one day before the legal deadline. According to Israel's Fundamental Laws (the country does not have a formal constitution, as is the case in the United Kingdom), if the state budget is not approved by the Knesset before the end of March, or within 145 days after the formation of a new government, the Knesset is automatically dissolved and elections are called within three months.

Furthermore, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) has approved four state budgets amid the Russian invasion that began on February 24, 2022. The budgets can be consulted here: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Article 96 of the Constitution of Ukraine obliges the government to submit the state budgets to the Verkhovna Rada "no later than September 15."

On the contrary, the government of Pedro Sánchez has failed to get Congress to approve a single one of its budgets in these three years of the legislature (which began in 2023). Recently, Sánchez decided to forgo presenting a new budget, using the war in Iran as an excuse —a war being fought more than 4,000 kilometers from Madrid and in which Spain is not involved in any way.

Article 134 of the Spanish Constitution establishes the government's constitutional duty to present its budget within a very specific timeframe. Sánchez has directly decided to disregard this constitutional duty and extend for a fourth year the 2023 budget, approved in November 2022, as he lacks the necessary parliamentary majority to approve new public accounts.

El 6 de marzo de 2018, cuando estaba en la oposición, Sánchez dijo sobre el gobierno de Mariano Rajoy: "Si este Gobierno no aprueba los Presupuestos no tiene nada más que decir, salvo convocar elecciones". Ahora que es él quien está en esta situación, se niega a convocar elecciones por temor a perderlas, pues todas las encuestas menos las del CIS (controlado por el gobierno) pronostican una clara derrota del PSOE, el partido socialista de Sánchez.

On March 6, 2018, when he was in the opposition, Sánchez said about Mariano Rajoy's government: "If this government doesn't approve the budget, it has nothing more to say except to call elections." Now that he is in this situation, he refuses to call elections for fear of losing them, since all the polls except those of the CIS (controlled by the government) predict a clear defeat for the PSOE, Sánchez's socialist party.

---

Photo: La Moncloa.