It was published in an extra edition of Official Gazette of the Union (DOU), on Tuesday night (10), a joint ordinance from the federal government to operationalize the release of parliamentary amendments, including the so-called “pix amendments”, which are special direct transfers from the Union’s cash flow to states and municipalities. The text was awaited by parliamentarians, after a decision yesterday (9) by Minister Flávio Dino, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), having rejected an appeal from Attorney General of the Union (AGU) which asked for more flexibility in the details of these amendments. With this setback, the government feared a boycott in voting on priority projects, including the spending cut package presented last week.
In practice, the ordinance reflects the essential terms of Flávio Dino’s decision for the payment of committee, bench and individual amendments of deputies and senators of the National Congress, but with a different interpretation in relation to those committed before the date of publication of the decision judicial process, which is December 3, 2024. This is the case with the allocation of special transfer amendments (pix amendments) for the health sector committed up to this date, which do not require detailing in a plan of work nor observe technical criteria defined by managers of the Unified Health System (SUS) and established by bipartite or tripartite intermanagement committees. The amendments in the health area represent half of the total volume allocated in 2024. The standard is signed by ministers Fernando Haddad (Finance), Simone Tebet (Planning and Budget), Esther Dweck (Management) and Alexandre Padilha (Institutional Relations).
Following the terms of the STF decision, the interministerial ordinance establishes that the presentation of the work plan for the allocation of amendments is a precondition for the use, by the beneficiary entity, of the resources released from December 3, 2024, the date of publication of the decision made within the scope of ADPF 854. In this case, according to the rule, “the beneficiaries of special transfers must present, by December 31, 2024, the work plan to be inserted in the transferegov.br, and it is mandatory to link its object to the defined purpose, classified by budgetary function and subfunction”.
It will be up to the sectoral bodies responsible for evaluating work plans to prepare, by February 1, 2025, an opinion indicating approval, approval with reservations or disapproval, and must publicize the evaluation reports on the internet. According to the ordinance, the body executing the amendments must include the identification of the parliamentarian requesting the appeal. Any parliamentarian who identifies himself as such can be considered an applicant, including party leaders, under the terms that were already foreseen in Flávio Dino’s decision and in the Complementary Law 210which established the new rules on parliamentary amendments.
Execution of amendments
Hours after Dino’s decision, still yesterday afternoon, an emergency meeting was called by Lula with the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), and of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), in the Palácio do Planalto, precisely to discuss ways of unlocking the amendments.
“We clarified to the presidents of both Houses what interpretation the AGU made of the latest decisions of the STF minister and that an enforceable opinion will be issued by the AGU, placing this interpretation, and this allows the ministries to continue implementing the amendments” , explained minister Alexandre Padilha, in an interview this Tuesday, after participating in the Governors Forum, in Brasília. The government’s guidance, passed on to the presidents of the Legislative Branch, is to speed up the implementation of the amendments.
“We want these resources to be implemented. They are works, they are programs at federal universities, programs in the health sector, a volume of resources that were pointed out by parliamentarians, but they are important programs, there are resources there to reduce queues for surgeries and exams in the Ministry of Health, works that are in progress”, he argued. In the minister’s assessment, the execution of the budgetary resources for the amendments improves “the environment for these votes even further”.
Late this Tuesday afternoon, the President of the Chamber informed that he will appoint rapporteurs for two of the spending cut projects, which have already been approved for urgent processing, and that the voting schedule for the next two weeks will take place from Monday to Friday , to complete the voting calendar, which also includes the Annual Budget Bill, the Budget Guidelines Law and other matters, such as the regulation of tax reform. The AGU’s legal opinion, cited by Padilha, which will provide legal support for the joint ordinance, had not yet been released by the body at the time of writing this report.
