The Government is going to make one last attempt to agree with the PP on the reform of the reception system for migrant minors by the autonomous communities. It will be on Friday, at the presidents’ conference. It was the presidents of the PP who demanded that it be part of the agenda, but the barons themselves now recognize the unlikelihood of closing an agreement. Faced with this impasse, the Executive has been negotiating “for weeks” with Junts to approve the reform with the majority of the investiture in the first part of 2025.
This was stated this Wednesday by government sources in an informal conversation with journalists at the Moncloa Palace. The ministers involved in the negotiation – the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the Minister of Childhood, Sira Rego – pointed out the closed-mindedness of the PP and the need to reform article 35 of the Immigration Law to systematize interterritorial solidarity with the regions. where migrant minors arrive as well as to determine what part the communities should finance and what the central government should finance.
This reform was already attempted last summer, but the vote against Junts, PP and Vox prevented the proposal from being approved. Since then, the situation of the kids who have arrived from Mauritania or Morocco to the Canary Islands and Ceuta has only worsened. The Government has met on multiple occasions with the parties involved without achieving any progress.
The last multilateral meeting was held on December 5 at the call of the Government and with the presence of the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, the president of Ceuta, Juan José Vivas, and a PP delegation headed by the parliamentary spokesperson, Miguel Tellado. The meeting ended with a resounding fiasco due to the total blockage of the first opposition party.
Clavijo, whose government partner in the Canary Islands is the PP, avoided journalists on the way out. Last March, the Canarian leader agreed to a reform of article 35 with the Government, but was met with rejection from Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party. At the return of the summer, Clavijo chose to sign a document with Feijóo himself. Nor has it served to unravel the negotiations.
Vivas, from the PP, also tried to escape from the press, but could not. In a brief statement he said he preferred not to point fingers, but settled: “We believe that the modification of article 35 of the law is necessary.”
A representative of the Ministry of Finance was also present at this meeting to make the PP see that the Government is willing to finance the new system of interterritorial solidarity. Something that was part of the initial conditions of the PP. But Feijóo’s people have adopted a maximal position as the Executive has accepted some of their requests, and now they are not willing to sign an agreement if the Executive does not fully assume its immigration policy, as Tellado himself explained to the journalists.
In fact, the national leadership of the PP entered the meeting on December 5 boasting that it was representing 12 autonomous communities, but when the ministers put on the table specific data on the distribution of minors and millions of euros, Tellado said that those Issues had to be resolved with the regional presidents. Everything in full conflict with Vox, which after leaving the autonomous governments that it shared with the popular ones – it still maintains agreements in dozens of city councils – now threatens to leave the regions governed in a minority by the PP without budgets if they accept the reception of the kids. who arrive alone in Spain.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will meet with the regional leaders this Friday in Santander. But the expectations of closing an agreement on a matter that the PP itself insisted on including on the agenda are null. This was expressed this Wednesday by the ministers responsible for the negotiation. But also the regional leaders of the PP consulted by elDiario.es.
Rebuild the majority of the investiture
If the failure of the negotiation is confirmed on Friday, the parties most interested in promoting an agreement will change their strategy. And all eyes turn to Junts, whose seven votes are those that were missing in April to, together with the rest of the majority of the investiture, approve the reform.
Clavijo himself has said that he has prepared a proposal with which to try to attract Carles Puigdemont’s men. But the Government itself has been negotiating with Junts the reform of the immigration law for “weeks” within a broader package that includes the 2025 Budget or the transfer to Catalonia of certain powers regarding immigration.
The Government will also insist with the regional presidents of the PP. Minister Sira Rego has already announced her intention to convene an intersectoral conference on Children with the communities. The forecast is that it will be held in January, and the minister will attend with the proposal that Clavijo brought to the meeting on December 5, as well as the commitment that financing will not be a problem. Last July the PP already asked for more money.
What the Government does rule out is making the reform by royal decree-law given the certain risk that the Constitutional Court could overthrow it for not being a valid mechanism to modify autonomous powers. It will be made as a bill.
The Government is also aware that the most appropriate formula is to have the support of the PP, which, today, controls the majority of the autonomous communities that must then apply the system. The ministers know that, if they manage to approve the reform, the battle will only change scenery: from Congress to the courts.
Source: www.eldiario.es
