The blockade announced by Junts to the Government’s laws will affect almost all projects that are already registered in Congress with some exceptions. And also to regulations that the Executive already has in the starting box, including the spending ceiling, the first step for the General Budgets and the public accounts themselves. The threat falls on initiatives as important for Moncloa as the law that reforms the justice system to leave investigations in the hands of prosecutors or the new official secrets law, which would modify for the first time the current one enacted during the Franco regime.
The Junts spokesperson in Congress, Míriam Nogueras, defended this Thursday the courage of her seven deputies to move all these policies forward: “Without the votes of Junts, they cannot approve measures.” Without the votes of the Catalan independentists, the Government will have a very difficult time developing its legislative agenda.
According to data collected by elDiario.es, your vote against is closely related to the Government’s defeats; it occurred in 12 of the 13 defeats that the Executive has suffered in the legislature. In six of them, Junts’ seven votes were key. Until now, furthermore, Carles Puigdemont’s party has been very loyal to the Government and its parties: it supported them 80% of the time, in 93 of almost 120 laws. In recent weeks, there have been several important examples: the decree to establish an arms embargo on Israel, the transfer of immigration powers, which did not pass due to the vote against Podemos, or the sustainable mobility law.
That is what will change from now on if the threat made by Nogueras this Thursday is fulfilled. “We will not vote in favor of the 21 laws that are being processed. The new laws approved by the Council of Ministers will also have amendments to all of them,” he said.
This affects the projects that the Government planned to bring up for debate soon, including the spending ceiling and the stability path, which will serve as a first test on the support it has for the General State Budgets. The public accounts, extended from 2023 and which Pedro Sánchez has publicly committed to presenting, are the great challenge of the legislature. But if the relationship with Junts is not on track, they will run aground as soon as they reach the Lower House.
There will also be no peace for the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, who has a package of laws in his hands to reform the justice system. One of those has just come out of the Council of Ministers towards Congress, the reform of the Criminal Procedure Law. The Government definitively approved the law just a few weeks ago so that it can begin to be processed in the Lower House, but Junts has already announced that it will present a complete amendment to any initiative that comes with the Government’s signature.
With this reform, Justice seeks, among other issues, that the direction of the investigation of criminal cases passes from the judges to the prosecutors, who will decide the steps to take to clarify who has committed a crime. It also proposes that the mandate of the attorney general not coincide with that of the Executive and incorporates the limitation of the popular accusation to veto political parties, restrict it to certain crimes – corruption is included – and require a “legitimate link” with the case in question to be able to exercise it, which the opposition has contemptuously censored as the “Begoña law”, in reference to the investigations that affect Sánchez’s partner.
There are several initiatives that Congress has already begun to process and that Junts will try to overthrow with the registration of an amendment to the entirety. Among them is the industry law, a rule to protect consumer rights, a reform of the financial system, another reform of the electoral system and several transpositions of European directives.
Some are important for the Government because they come from the plan for democratic regeneration that Sánchez announced before the Cortes more than a year ago. For example, the media law that contemplates the creation of a registry, with obligations and the possibility of fines for companies that fail to comply with these precepts. The Council of Ministers definitively approved it this summer and it is in the process of amendments.
In a similar situation is the Classified Information law, one of the pending accounts of the Executive and the great demands of the investiture partners, mainly of the Basque Nationalist Party, which for years has tried to reform the current Franco law in Congress.
The project establishes for the first time the automatic declassification of confidential information when certain deadlines elapse with four categories: “Top Secret”, “Secret”, “Confidential” and “Restricted”. The first two are the exclusive responsibility of the Council of Ministers, and each of them is gradually assigned a classification time limit taking into account the risk of unauthorized disclosure or misuse. The maximum classification time will be 45 years, extendable for another 15 years for reasons.
Laws blocked since the beginning of the legislature
It is difficult in any case for the Junts threat to translate into weekly defeats for the Government in the chamber. The most likely thing is that, as has happened until now, the Congress Board will retain all the initiatives in which there is no progress in the negotiation to avoid a continued image that the Executive is incapable of moving anything forward. This term, it is common for plenary sessions not to last until Thursday precisely due to the low production of laws in the commissions.
There are some paradigmatic examples of regulations that have been dormant since the beginning of the legislature, such as the family law, which entered Congress in March 2024 and has since accumulated dozens of extensions of amendments. Also the Health Law for the universality of the National Health System, the creation of the National Energy Commission or a Government project that forces companies to provide information on sustainability.
The Junts veto not only covers the Government’s laws, but also some of the initiatives presented by the groups that make up the Executive, by PSOE and Sumar. For example, the plurinational group has registered an initiative to reform the crime of freedom of expression and another to restore universal justice.
ELA Law, Cinema and Sustainable Mobility Law, exceptions
The only measures that the independence party will save are those that were agreed upon with the Government before the decision to break. Thus, the seven parliamentarians will vote in favor of the decree that develops the ‘ALS law’ with which 500 million euros will be allocated to guarantee care for people with this disease; of three laws that are in Congress (the customer service law, the social economy law and the cinema law) and the sustainable mobility law, which is already in the Senate.
Source: www.eldiario.es
