EH Bildu announced this Thursday an agreement with the Government on the repeal of the gag law, one of the commitments made by Pedro Sánchez’s team with its partners at the beginning of the investiture. According to the details provided by the pro-independence party, the new law will eliminate the use of rubber balls and calls for the modification of the Immigration Law within six months to put an end to sudden returns. It also modifies the sanctions for disrespect for authority and disobedience. The agreement thus addresses the four points that blocked the negotiation during the last legislature.
Congress is thus moving towards ending the Citizen Security Law that Mariano Rajoy’s Government promoted to curtail the right to protest and that has been in force for longer under the parliamentary majority that promised to repeal it than under the Executive that promoted it. According to parliamentary sources, the text agreed between EH Bildu, PSOE and Sumar also has the support of ERC and the PNV, pending Junts and Podemos, which has already warned that the text seems insufficient and an “aesthetic touch-up” .
“With this agreement we unblock the situation and ensure that the great pending issue, ending the gag law, will become a reality,” Mertxe Aizpurua, the Basque independentists in Congress, celebrated. The agreement has come to light after more than six months of talks and negotiations, according to parliamentary sources.
The agreed text addresses the four points that blocked negotiations during the last legislature, after a tortuous negotiation between the parliamentary partners and the Government: the use of rubber balls – which this rule does not regulate –, hot returns, fines for disobedience and lack of respect for authority. ERC and EH Bildu demanded the elimination of those four points, the most “harmful”, according to their arguments, and the PSOE rejected those demands that it considered “excuses”.
As they alleged then, the use of rubber balls was not regulated in the 2015 law and the permissiveness of hot returns was included in an additional provision of that text, but the Government asked to address them in a future legislative reform.
Now, as EH Bildu has announced, the PSOE has agreed to move and modify those four points that made the reform fail during the last legislature.
Regarding rubber balls, the new text, according to the details that have emerged from the agreement, speaks of a replacement of that material with “less harmful means.” The new law calls on authorities to develop specific protocols “in accordance with international standards” on the management of demonstrations and gatherings. These protocols must include the use of force and riot control equipment to “always use the least harmful means for people and preventing them from causing irreparable injuries.” Social groups have historically criticized rubber balls for the injuries caused to many protesters, who have lost their eyes due to the impact of these projectiles.
“The government will announce a schedule to replace other material but it cannot be one that causes irreparable damage,” EH Bildu deputy Jon Iñarritu detailed during the press conference in which they announced the agreement. During the last legislature, both ERC and EH Bildu demanded the express prohibition of this material, and they included it in the transactional amendments they presented to the presentation report at the beginning of 2023. In the agreed wording, the expression “progressively replace” the rubber balls for less harmful materials.
This change, however, has the approval of ERC, which has applauded that the PSOE “has accepted” its proposals. “Some of the most controversial measures that will disappear with the agreed reform are the elimination of rubber balls and the repeal of hot returns, demands highly demanded, not only by Esquerra Republicana, but also by different organizations in defense of human rights. “humans,” sources from the Republican group have transferred.
Regarding immediate returns, the agreement includes an additional provision so that within six months a modification in the immigration law is addressed “establishing as criteria for the modification the respect and application of the regulations on Human Rights and international protection, establishing access and evaluation of requests for international protection prior to the possible expulsion process.”
“The provision must recognize and guarantee the rights of migrants and ensure that asylum applications will be processed in accordance with the provisions of the Human Rights and international protection regulations to which Spain is a party, with strict respect for International Humanitarian Law. Consequently, the certification and identification of people potentially seeking asylum and the evaluation of their access to requests for international protection must be carried out in the places enabled for this purpose at the border crossings prior to the possible expulsion process,” that provision says.
However, this modification of the law, beyond the Government’s commitment, needs the support of the rest of the parliamentary partners when the immigration law reaches Congress.
Nor has EH Bildu remained immobile here, which together with ERC proposed during the last legislature to include an additional provision to directly modify the Immigration Law – without a six-month period like the one set now – and which explicitly mentioned the prohibition of the rejection of foreigners at the border, individually or collectively, without a procedure that allows identifying whether people are potential asylum seekers.
The agreement reached also addresses the other two points that ran aground in the previous negotiation. Fines for lack of respect for authority and disobedience. Iñarritu recalled that the lack of respect towards agents is what has generated the most sanctions since the implementation of the ‘gag law’ and that is why he has celebrated the specific agreement on this point.
What the new text does is objectify what were previously considered lack of respect so that they now refer to “insults or slander” that are not a crime. “Until now an arbitrary criterion worked, the violations against authority have been wearing a t-shirt, a pin, a look or a tone of voice. ”With the new law, insults or insults that are not a crime, that are something objective, that are relevant expressions, will be punished,” Iñarritu explained.
As for disobedience, it will go from a serious infraction to a minor one and a criterion is added so that it is “manifest, clear and objective.” Disobedience will be fined “when it involves the refusal to comply with a legal order or in accordance with the law or the legal order and when it does not constitute a criminal offense”, for resistance to authority the existence of “corporeal opposition” will be assessed when It is the “refusal to comply with a legal order or one that is in accordance with the law or the legal order, and when it does not constitute a criminal offense.”
On these last two points, the PSOE has accepted a wording practically identical to that proposed by EH Bildu and ERC in the negotiation of the presentation report during the last legislature, which ended up knocking down the PSOE amid accusations of its immobility.
Waiting for the groups
The reform needs the support of the investiture bloc to move forward. “I will not be the one to speak on behalf of anyone but I can say that the first impression, the first feedback is positive,” Aizpurua said when asked about the support of the rest of the parliamentary groups. At the moment the text has the approval of PSOE, Sumar and the Basque independentists themselves, as well as the PNV, which has announced that it will also sign the text that will soon be registered in Congress.
However, the spokesperson for the jeltzale formation, Aitor Esteban, has warned that he reserves the right to present amendments, especially in relation to points that have to do with disobedience and lack of respect. “We have to turn it around because what is proposed is to go from serious to light sanctions but the principle of authority must be maintained. Linked to this is the issue of insults and slander. What we proposed at the time was that this had to be modified and limited. We reached an agreement on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court but now it returns to the generality,” Esteban detailed in a press conference to assess the agreement.
In any case, doubts once again rest on Junts. Although the Catalan independentists supported the agreements reached during the last legislature, the attitude that the party has maintained with the Government in recent months could also jeopardize this process. Parliamentary sources see Carles Puigdemont’s people as receptive on this matter but do not dare to make too many predictions.
Shortly after the agreement became known, Junts sources stated that they have always defended the repeal of the gag law, but that they will study the text and present their own amendments during the parliamentary process.
It also remains to be known what the BNG, the Canarian Coalition and especially Podemos will do, whose four deputies are essential to carry out such a reform. In his first assessment, the party’s Secretary of Organization, Pablo Fernández, has called the text “clearly insufficient”, since in his opinion rubber balls are not expressly prohibited nor hot returns are eliminated. “This cannot be called a repeal of the gag law,” he said, describing the agreed text as a mere “aesthetic touchup.”
The IU spokesperson in Congress and Sumar deputy, Enrique Santiago, defended the agreed text at a press conference this Thursday and called for “responsibility.” “For our group there are some points that are unsatisfactory but we know in which country we live, what correlation there is and that in a democracy there are many points of view and since ours does not represent an absolute majority we have to get closer to the rest of the groups,” he said. . “This is the second chance, I think there will not be many more opportunities,” he warned.
Source: www.eldiario.es
