The parliamentary spokesperson for PSOE, Pilar Costa, has described as election scaremongering the threat by the Partido Popular's national minister of health that the Balearics and other regions which return health cards to immigrants could face huge fines for doing so. The minister, Rubén Moreno, has said that the moves could violate state powers and produce possible multi-million fines from the European Union.
Costa has responded by saying that the PP should devote more resources to health in the state budget and by suggesting that the threat of fines is linked to the upcoming general election and the poor result that polls are suggesting for the PP. She has added that the regional government has guaranteed a right to health care to some 15,000 people who were "robbed" of it under the PP government of José Ramón Bauzá and that this is a right, moreover, contemplated under the Balearic Statute of Autonomy. She has gone to say that PP references to threats of fines by the EU are "cowardice" and to reiterate the demand that the PP national government devote more to an area - health - that was hardest hit by "ideological cutbacks".