President Javier Milei has controversially vetoed laws that would boost funding for public universities and declare a paediatric emergency, with Garrahan Children’s Hospital in the forefront, setting up a fresh confrontation with the opposition and the unions of the workers affected.
Decree 647/2025, published Wednesday in the Official Gazette, overturned legislation approved by Congress on August 21, which improves salaries for teaching and non-academic staff.
Some opposition voices commented on the irony of this veto coming on the eve of Día del Maestro (“Teachers’ Day”) last Thursday.
The lower house Chamber of Deputies had backed the bill with 158 votes in favour, slightly short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a future presidential veto.
A special session is planned for September 17, when the opposition will decide whether to mount a challenge.
The bill, promoted by the opposition, sought to guarantee financing for public universities across Argentina, ensure collective bargaining to improve pay, update operating budgets for universities and hospitals, and expand grants and academic programmes.
Milei rejected it on the grounds that it would jeopardise the fiscal surplus and increase spending without identifying clear funding sources.
University unions have already staged strikes and street blockades in protest and have vowed that more will follow.
Milei already vetoed a bill seeking to increase university funding last year and later secured enough votes in the Chamber of Deputies to uphold that decision.
The governors of Buenos Aires Province, Córdoba, San Juan and Tierra del Fuego were among the many opposition voices criticising the veto of the university financing bill.
Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof accused Milei of misunderstanding the millions of votes against him in last Sunday’s midterms in that province.
Opposition caucuses are also weighing whether to press ahead with further debate, as tensions mount following Milei’s defeat in the elections and corruption allegations involving Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei, the President’s sister.
Garrahan bill
The presidential veto of the declaration of a paediatric emergency was based on a similar logic of shielding the fiscal surplus with the argument that the pay increases alone would cost 115 billion pesos.
Medical and non-medical staff at the prestigious Garrahan Children’s Hospital in Buenos Aires have been protesting for months, demanding greater resources and improved pay for workers.
Unions immediately announced more demonstrations for this week and next in response.
Former three-term Córdoba governor Juan Schiaretti, widely considered to be the architect behind the Provincias Unidas bloc of six provincial governors, criticised the veto and said that Córdoba deputies would vote to override it.
Schiaretti, a 2023 presidential candidate, dismissed the cost argument, saying that the sum of 0.02 percent of Gross Domestic Product was equivalent to half the tax evasion of the Tabacalera Sarandí cigarette company.
The government has also signalled that a veto is expected imminently against a bill for the automatic transfers of National Treasury Contributions (ATN) to provincial governors although there was more hesitation with this veto since it was a potential bargaining-chip to negotiate with the increasingly discontented governors.
At press time presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni ratified that the veto would be going ahead.
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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