In an unexpected move, the PP, Junts and PSOE have reached an agreement this Thursday in Congress for a law that the Catalan independentists considered key to continuing to maintain their support for the Government before the break: a modification of the Penal Code to punish more harshly people who commit the same crime several times. An issue, that of multiple recidivism, which has long been part of the agenda of the extreme right, in its attempt to link immigration with crime. The law will go to the first plenary session after the Christmas break, as those parties have agreed.
The law had been in a drawer for several months, stuck due to the lack of agreement among the majority of the investiture. This blockade was one of the reasons that led Junts to break with the Government for failing to comply with the commitments made with them. Just a few days after announcing the blowup of relations, the Socialists agreed to accelerate negotiations on this matter and on Tuesday the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, advanced a meeting this Thursday.
The novelty in the last few hours has been the strange alliance between Junts, PSOE and PP to finish closing an agreement that allows the text to go to commission in two weeks. It is the commitment that they agreed to at the presentation meeting this Thursday, in which the three parties have agreed on six transactional amendments. The report that the commission will vote on also has the support of the Basque Nationalist Party and Vox, and has the explicit rejection for the moment of EH Bildu and Podemos.
This agreement paves the parliamentary path for the law and the expectation is that it will be voted on in the first plenary session after the Christmas break. Congress will stop in the coming days and will not resume its ordinary activity until the second week of February, although it could be agreed to hold an extra-ordinary plenary session both in December and in the first weeks of the year.
“There is an exotic agreement, but there is an agreement,” summarized a deputy from the left bloc at the end of the presentation meeting after confirming that Junts had aligned the interests of PSOE and PP in the same text at their moment of greatest distance. The move has a series of interesting aspects for the future of the legislature. Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party allows the advancement of a key law for the stability of the relationship between PSOE and Junts, but at the same time demonstrates to Puigdemont’s party that their votes allow him to move forward with his agenda, a few days after having encouraged the Catalan employers’ association to convince the independentistas to support him in a motion of censure. In any case, it is a law that is in total ideological harmony with its proposals and the turn to the right on immigration that the main opposition party has been imposing in its speeches for some time.
Within the PP they clarify that the agreement was reached with the post-convergents and that it is the PSOE that later accepted the changes already negotiated. “There is no three-way agreement between PSOE, PP and Junts in the presentation on the Proposed Law on Multiple Recidivism,” sources from the popular group report. The socialists have supported the transactional amendments negotiated between PP and Junts but two modifications that they have promoted will also be included.
On the other hand, the PSOE joins its votes with the PP to try to advance one of the laws to which it committed with Junts in what it considers a very important step for the recomposition of relations with its most uncomfortable partner. He does so despite the fact that this issue is delicate for a left-wing formation: the extreme right has long demanded a reform of this style in its everlasting attempt to mix crime with immigration. Catalan independentists have already tried to distance themselves from that approach in their speeches in the past.
The agreed law seeks to change the Penal Code to toughen penalties for the repetition of crimes that in most cases are small, such as theft. An apparently legal law has an enormous political charge at a time when the extreme right puts immigrants in the focus of these crimes. It is common rhetoric in the speeches of Vox but also in those of Aliança Catalana, the Catalan far-right pro-independence party that has soared in the polls largely at the expense of the support of Junts.
Source: www.eldiario.es
