Junts increases the pressure on the Government with the announcement of its rejection of the laws that arrive or are being processed in Congress, except for those that were agreed before the decision of Carles Puigdemont’s team to break with Pedro Sánchez. “Pedro Sánchez’s legislature remains blocked,” said the spokesperson, Míriam Nogueras, who has announced amendments to all of the 25 laws that are currently being processed by parliament. “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 in their entirety,” said Nogueras. The movement truncates the expectations of Moncloa, which intended to negotiate law by law after the break announced by Puigdemont.
“They have decided to cling to power, but not govern,” said the Junts spokesperson in reference to PSOE and Sumar, after criticizing Pedro Sánchez for not giving explanations about how he intends to govern “without the necessary majority.” “Without the votes of Junts, they cannot approve measures,” said Nogueras, who has expressly mentioned the General State Budgets, and laws such as the so-called ‘Bolaños law’ and ‘Begoña law’, with which the Government intends to put an end to popular accusations, for example. Everything that wants to move forward, Nogueras has expressed, will have to be “with PP and Vox.”
“The Government of the Spanish State has lost its legislative capacity,” added Junts, which has assured that the decision is “a reality check”: “We want coherence and for the agreements to be fulfilled.” What Nogueras has not clarified is whether he will back down from that position if Sánchez complies with the demands of the independence party under the premise that they do not trust him to do so two years after having signed the agreements. And he leaves the ball in the Government’s court, although for the moment he continues to rule out a motion of censure to oust Sánchez, which would need the votes of PP and Vox.
What they maintain in Moncloa is that what is in their “hand” has been accomplished and what does not depend exclusively on the Government “is working” to achieve it. The example they give is the official status of Catalan in the EU, which depends on the unanimity of the 27 and there are several countries with reservations about approving it, among them Germany, which recently accepted a bilateral dialogue with the Spanish Executive to try to reach an agreement. Regarding the amnesty, the Government remembers that it is the Supreme Court that has decided not to apply it in its entirety. Regarding the delegation of powers regarding migration to Catalonia, the socialists assumed that demand, but it was rejected in Congress with Podemos’ ‘no’.
The Junts press conference, in which the group’s seven deputies participated, took place two weeks after the attack that the pro-independence party launched at Pedro Sánchez by announcing the withdrawal of its support. However, the Government had minimized that decision under the premise that they already had to negotiate law by law with Carles Puigdemont’s formation. The Junts movement complicates the Executive’s intention to continue working “vote by vote.” What had also blown up were the negotiations that were being held in Switzerland and that in the last meetings, after Santos Cerdán was imprisoned, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero led the socialist side.
Junts’ decision means that the Government cannot carry out any initiative, not even the transpositions of European directives, unless it does so with the support of PP or Vox. 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.
Among the laws that Junts will veto, through its ‘no’ or the presentation of amendments to the entirety, are the family law, the classified information law, laws for the improvement of the national health system, the law for the reestablishment of the National Energy Commission, the law for business information on sustainability, the law for administrators and buyers of credits, the law for the prevention of alcohol consumption by minors, the loreg, the law for the inclusion of people with disabilities, the law for the reform of the university system, among others. Some of these initiatives have been blocked throughout the legislature.
Source: www.eldiario.es
