Colombia’s Top Court Kills Petro’s Emergency Fiscal Decree
Key Facts
— — Colombia’s Constitutional Court declared Decree 1390 unconstitutional on April 9 in a 6–2 vote, permanently blocking President Petro’s attempt to raise 16.3 trillion pesos (~$4.47 billion) through emergency economic powers
— — Magistrate Carlos Camargo Assis wrote that the decree “constitutes an affront to the functioning of Congress” and violates the separation of powers by using emergency mechanisms to bypass the legislature’s rejection of the same tax measures
— — Petro responded: “They want to strangle us because we are a different government” — the ruling leaves the 2026 national budget structurally underfunded with no clear path to closing the gap
The Colombia Petro emergency decree was the government’s last-resort attempt to fund a budget that Congress refused to finance. The Constitutional Court’s 6–2 ruling does not just block the money — it establishes that a president cannot use emergency powers to overrule a legislative “no” on taxation.
The Sala Plena issued Sentencia C-075 de 2026 on April 9, declaring Decreto Legislativo 1390 (December 22, 2025) inexequible — unconstitutional — with six magistrates voting to strike it down and two, Vladimir Fernández and Héctor Carvajal, dissenting, as reported by Infobae Colombia, EFE, and El País (Cali). The decree had already been provisionally suspended since January 29 after the Court found preliminary evidence that constitutional requirements for declaring an economic emergency had not been met.
The backstory is straightforward. In December 2025, Congress rejected Petro’s tax reform (ley de financiamiento) that would have raised the 16.3 trillion pesos needed to fully fund the 2026 national budget. Petro then declared a 30-day state of economic, social, and ecological emergency, using the emergency powers to impose the same tax measures the legislature had blocked. The Court found this sequence to be the core constitutional violation: the emergency was not caused by an unforeseeable crisis but by a political disagreement with Congress over spending — a disagreement the Constitution assigns to the legislature, not the executive.
What Happens to the Budget
Two subsidiary decrees — 1474/2025 and 044/2026 — that were issued under the emergency framework also remain without legal effect. The practical consequence is that Colombia’s 2026 budget has a multi-trillion peso hole with no mechanism to fill it. The government’s options are limited: negotiate a smaller tax package with a hostile Congress, cut spending across ministries, or run a larger-than-planned deficit that would further strain the country’s creditworthiness. The S&P downgrade to BB− in Session 15 already reflected the agency’s assessment of Colombia’s deteriorating fiscal position.
Petro’s response was defiant. “They want to strangle us because we are a different government,” he said. The framing is consistent with his broader narrative of institutional resistance to progressive governance, but the political reality is less heroic: his first tax reform passed in 2022, his second was rejected by Congress in late 2025, and now his emergency workaround has been ruled unconstitutional. With the 2026 elections approaching and Iván Cepeda emerging as the progressive movement’s likely presidential candidate, the fiscal crisis will define Petro’s final year in office — and the inheritance his successor receives.
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