Here is a problem a government can end up with. Congress passes a law telling you to spend money. You veto it. Congress overrides your veto. You then sign the law, because you have to, and issue a decree saying the law is in force but nobody needs to do anything about it yet, because Congress never said where the money would come from. A judge looks at this and says the decree is unconstitutional and you have to apply the law. You don’t. So the judge starts fining you by the day.
That is roughly where Argentina is with its public universities. As Teresa Bo reported for Al Jazeera from Buenos Aires, a federal judge is now fining President Javier Milei’s government 100,000 pesos a day, which she puts at about $70, for failing to carry out parts of the university financing law. The same week, students at the University of Buenos Aires held an assembly in the central hall of the Exact and Natural Sciences building, shouting “This cannot go on!”, and announced a one-day occupation of the building, which is an old and well-used form of protest in Argentina. Thousands marched through the city on Thursday. Some of it turned violent.
The law nobody will pay for
The background is that last year Congress overrode Milei’s vetoes on two laws, one raising funding for public universities and the other declaring a disability emergency. Milei had been here before: in 2024 he vetoed an earlier university funding plan despite protests, and that time the veto held. This time it didn’t. The government has still not implemented either law, and its argument is the same one: Congress didn’t say how they would be paid for. The university law says the state has to restore university salaries and student scholarships that inflation has eaten away, update budgets regularly, and pay for research, university hospitals and infrastructure. All of that costs money. Milei’s whole programme is about not spending money.
Federal judge Martín Cormick found that argument unconvincing. On October 6 he struck down the government’s decree as unconstitutional. According to reports of the ruling, that was Decree 759/2025, which had put Law 27.795 into effect while suspending its practical implementation. He ordered the law applied immediately. About a week later, on October 14, he started the fines. As the Rio Times reported, they fall on cabinet chief Diego Santilli, the official who coordinates the cabinet and controls budget allocations. The case was brought by the CIN, the council of public university rectors, which is led by Franco Bartolacci.
Some arithmetic
A hundred thousand pesos a day comes to 36.5 million pesos a year. Al Jazeera’s conversion gives about $70 a day and the Rio Times gives about $66, so call it roughly $24,000 to $25,500 a year. That is not going to show up in the national accounts.
Now compare it with the amount in dispute. According to the Rio Times, the universities want 11 trillion pesos for 2027, and the budget bill now before Congress offers about 7.35 trillion. The gap is 3.65 trillion pesos. At 100,000 pesos a day, the government could pay the fine for 36.5 million days, which is 100,000 years, before it had paid as much in fines as it would cost to close the gap for one year. If you are a finance ministry that cares about its fiscal surplus, which Milei’s very much does, that is a pretty easy trade-off.
Sure. But the size of the fine probably isn’t the point. Court fines like this are mostly a signal, and the person this one is aimed at is a named official, not an abstract “state”. The Rio Times reports that the government plans to appeal and that the judge could raise the fine or extend it to other officials. The actual question is whether a court can force spending into the budget of a president who has staked his reputation on keeping that budget in surplus, and that question is being fought out while Congress argues about the 2027 budget anyway.
On campus and in the street
What the students say they are protesting is the salary side of the law. “Our best professors are leaving en masse,” Emiliano Gato, a physics student, told Al Jazeera. He said they are going to private universities because their pay no longer covers basic needs. Maria Teresa de Jesus, a chemistry professor at the university, earns about $700 a month. One way to put that: the daily fine, at Al Jazeera’s $70, is a tenth of her monthly salary, and over a month it adds up to about three times what she is paid. “I have come to this protest as a last resort,” she said.
Thursday’s march was meant to be peaceful. Protesters blocked the city centre, demanded that the law be implemented and called for a general strike. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets, and some protesters threw rocks. At least 25 people were detained and several were injured, including members of the security forces. It was the fifth Federal University March, which gathered at Plaza Congreso.
Milei’s side of it
Milei has his numbers too. Since taking office in 2023 he has cut thousands of state jobs, closed ministries, reduced subsidies and ended programmes meant to fight inflation. Monthly inflation is now around 2 percent. He says the economy has grown for 27 consecutive months, at four times its historical rate. Some Argentines still support the plan and hope that developing the country’s resources will bring jobs and better pay. Others accuse him of governing for a privileged few. Either way, “Congress didn’t say where the money comes from” fits his whole approach: if spending has no identified source, you just don’t do it.
The trouble is that Congress did say the money should be spent, twice, and the second time it overrode him. Where it comes from is now a question for the executive, and for the moment the executive’s answer is about 100,000 pesos a day.