Unusual agreement in Congress. Sumar has facilitated this Tuesday with his abstention the processing of a PP initiative to increase parliamentary control over the shipment of weapons and military operations abroad. With this movement, which has broken the voting unity in the Government, he has managed to tie the support of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s supporters to the consideration of his own law that seeks to prohibit evictions derived from mortgages with abusive clauses. The PP vote was not ultimately necessary since the law has gathered the support of the investiture bloc.
Sumar was trying this Tuesday to achieve an important victory with a law to stop evictions caused by non-payment of mortgages that included abusive clauses. To secure the votes, he has tried to bring the PP closer to the text, although the initiative has obtained practically unanimity. 314 supports and the only votes against Vox. Meanwhile, the PP has obtained 174 supports and 30 abstentions to move forward with its text, including those of the plurinational group. From the ‘yeses’ of the extreme right, Feijóo’s party has taken away those of Podemos, whose votes have voted for the initiative.
“Today has been a good day,” celebrated the spokesperson for the plurinational group, Íñigo Errejón, who despite what sources from the group reported during the day has rejected that it is an exchange. “It is not one thing for another, both are good,” he defended. During the day, however, in Sumar they assured that there was a combined negotiation and that the supports were communicating vessels.
Increase congressional control of military operations
The PP text seeks to increase the control that Congress has over the military operations of Spanish troops in international conflicts. To do this, it modifies some articles of the National Defense Law of 2005. Although the measure has many nuances. For example, it establishes the authorization of the Lower House to “order operations abroad that are not directly related to the defense of Spain or the national interest.” “The authorization will be valid for five years from the day it was approved by the Congress of Deputies,” the proposal adds.
The text also incorporates an appearance by the Government in the Defense Commission before the end of the five years of authorization to establish whether an extension of the mission is appropriate or not.
And it also establishes controls for the shipment of military material to a war zone. “Priorly, the Government must request authorization from the Plenary Session of the Congress of Deputies, said authorization will be on an annual basis. Renewals of this agreement may be requested in the corresponding parliamentary commission,” establishes the text, which also includes an annual appearance by the Minister of Defense in the branch commission in Congress “exclusively and monographically, in order to report on the evolution of missions abroad authorized by the Chamber.”
“Who can be against talking about, debating or authorizing in this Parliament issues already reflected in the law? Do you believe that the extension should occur exclusively within the Council of Ministers, as is currently the case, and deprive Parliament of this power?” defended PP deputy Alberto Fabra.
The initiative has gone ahead thanks to the Sumar movement, which with the abstention of its 27 deputies has left the PP with a comfortable majority.
The plurinational group already acknowledged this Tuesday at a press conference that they were studying the proposal and that a priori it did not sound bad to them, as the spokesperson, Íñigo Errejón, explained at a press conference. On the platform, during the parliamentary debate, the spokesperson for the Sumar Foreign Affairs Commission, Agustín Santos Maraver, combined a harsh tone against the PP for its lack of “credibility” in presenting such a proposal with the announcement of some amendments. to improve the text. “Article 17 already establishes that the Government has to go to Congress and comply with the limits. The Government does all kinds of tricks to comply with it. “Is this problem resolved with a five-year period that involves jumping from one legislature to another?” criticized the deputy and career diplomat.
“Why does the UN Security Council review mission mandates annually? Why wouldn’t it be simpler to have an amendment that says that the Government has to go to the Defense Commission to explain how the peace missions are doing and that the session will not only be informative but that a vote could be held to be able to maintain, withdraw or condition that mission,” he proposed.
All this, to close with more criticism of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party. “It is very difficult for the PP to convince us after the Iraq war that what they want is more democracy and more transparency. Let’s take the annual amendment and see how these problems do not exist,” he said.
Some groups during the debate have precisely accused the PP of trying to divide the progressive bloc in Congress with an initiative of this type. “They only ask parliament to count and be the protagonist when you are in the opposition. It is an opportunist tactic,” criticized ERC deputy Álvaro Vidal, to reproach the PP for its lack of “authority” in this matter.
“They are seeking to exploit the contradictions of the progressive bloc,” Podemos spokesperson Javier Sánchez Serna has also reproached. His party, however, has embraced that attempt and ended up supporting the initiative this Tuesday. “If they present it, it is the clumsiness of the PSOE. He has not even allowed our participation in the war in Ukraine to be debated in Congress,” he criticized.
“We are going to propose to you when a series of amendments are being processed so that the missions of the military are not voted on every five years but in two. Above all so that Spain cannot send military material to countries that are committing genocides,” he explained below.
The PNV has refused to support the initiative amid criticism of the parliamentary technique used by the PP, which had already approved this same law in the Senate and is waiting for Congress to activate the presentation meetings to discuss it. “We are proposed to take into consideration an initiative that is already in process. We will vote against. It would be absurd to take her into consideration with her twin,” said Jeltzale deputy Mikel Legarda.
Similar criticism has been sent by PSOE spokesperson José Antonio Rodríguez Salas. “It is not understood why they present it again. “It is a lack of consideration for the legislative process,” he criticized.
End bank abuses
Sumar’s bill, meanwhile, seeks to regulate the so-called Redito Ad libitum (REDAL) clauses in the contracting of mortgage loans and credits. “It intends that no family that has signed a mortgage with abusive clauses be evicted for not being able to pay their loan with the bank,” explained the deputy of the commons, integrated into the plurinational group, Fèlix Alonso.
The text proposes alternatives to families so that they can continue in the home until the last mortgage bill as long as they pay the interest and amortize “a minimum of one euro per month.” At that moment, Alonso explained, he will have three options: “Sell the house. Return it to the bank with the right to first refusal and withdrawal by the administration to expand the public park. Or pay the remaining loan in full.” “It’s a win win. Everyone wins. The family does not lose their house and the bank earns more interest,” he noted.
The initiative also opens the door for those affected by this type of clauses to renegotiate their contracts with the bank. “Credit institutions must implement a specific complaint system, which will be voluntary for the consumer, and whose purpose will be to respond to the requests they make within the scope of this law,” the text maintains.
“Almost all variable mortgages signed before 2011 contain errors. In 2003 they were already alerted by the Bank of Spain. In successive consultations, the regulator has confirmed that these contracts must be renegotiated by consensus between the family and the entity, never unilaterally,” Alonso recalled in his defense of the law.
These clauses often consist of debts that are apparently affordable at first but grow over time until they become unaffordable for many families.
The proposal, according to sources from the parliamentary group, “corrects the problems of lack of information on contracts prior to 2011”, in many cases derived from the malpractice of the banks, something that is ratified by numerous court rulings. On the other hand, “it alleviates the enormous cost for families trapped in these contracts, who assumed thousands of euros of interest that they did not count on.” “This law will help protect consumers even more, those people who were now left unprotected due to a Redal clause or poor banking practices,” they add, while establishing that “calculation formulas and mathematical errors “They will have to be public, accessible and updated.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
