The Government will take the legal reform of the PP, Cs and Vox to the Constitutional Court to increase irrigation in Doñana

The Government tries to stop a new millionaire fine by the European Commission, this time for leaving Doñana unprotected.

After the sanction for not purifying urban waters that already amounts to 63 million, a month ago Brussels threatened to fine Spain if it allows Doñana to dry up due to the planned increase in irrigation.

Now the Ministry for the Ecological Transition makes a move and has announced that it will bring before the Constitutional Court the bill to increase the intensive agriculture of strawberries, presented at the beginning of the year in the Andalusian Parliament by the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox.

The ministry considers that the parliamentary initiative of the Andalusian right, which will legalize between 1,460 and 1,903 hectares of irrigated land next to this biosphere reserve, invades its powers over the Guadalquivir basin "and blatantly interferes in the sphere of exclusive jurisdiction of the State”.

The European Director General for the Environment, Florika Fink, had warned a month ago, with a very forceful tone, that Spain would be fined if it did not protect the Doñana aquifers, under minimum conditions due to illegal wells.

To which the Ecological Transition has responded: "If the bill is finally approved, the Government of Spain will promote an appeal of unconstitutionality, for the immediate suspension of its application, and urging its annulment by the Constitutional Court", reads the report sent this Tuesday to Brussels.

The Government tries to buy time to avoid the millionaire fine that the Commission will impose for failing to comply with the ruling of last June of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The text alerted Spain that it is obliged to protect Doñana from the illegal extraction of water for greenhouses that for decades have depleted its underground reserves, along with the legal ones for the Matalascañas urbanization, just 400 meters from several lagoons in the national park.

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“Doñana is a very sensitive ecosystem and it is urgent to close the illegal wells”

The aquifer was declared "overexploited" a year and a half ago by the government, and its levels continue to fall.

Meanwhile, the Andalusian Board continues without completing its 2014 plan for the recovery of the aquifer and the parliamentary groups of PP, Cs and Vox row in the regional Chamber to increase intensive agriculture, contrary to European justice.

These three groups presented a bill by way of urgency at the beginning of the year and have a parliamentary majority, so it could be approved before the summer of this electoral year.

The condemnation of the European Commission, UNESCO, the Government, the Ramsar Convention on wetlands, conservation organizations, and even part of the farmers of Doñana have failed to stop the political groups or the Board (in the hands of PP and Cs),

Ecological Transition clarifies to the Commission that the Andalusian initiative is a "unilateral determination of the regional legislator" that implies "displacing, altering or disturbing the exclusive competence that the Constitution attributes to the State over the waters of inter-community basins, as is the case".

That is to say, the ministry considers that the Andalusian law proposal cannot prosper, since the waters of the Guadalquivir concern Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia and are part of its attributions.

The leaders of the Andalusian right argue, for their part, that the regularization by law of hectares today to "irrigable agricultural land" is a legal denomination that will only allow farmers to claim irrigation rights if the ministry grants them through the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation.

The estimate of the regularized area ranges between 1,500 according to the Government and 1,900 according to satellite calculations made by the environmental organization WWF.

While the political struggle continues, it still does not rain copiously in the south, the drought tightens, the reservoirs of the basin are only at 28% of their capacity, the lagoons of the reserve suffer increasingly lower levels and the loss of biodiversity is getting worse, warn experts from the Doñana Biological Station.

Raft now dry to steal water in Lucena del Puerto, near Doñana, last month.

Regarding the incorporation of more strawberry entrepreneurs to the irrigation communities in the area and the regularization of irrigation uses, the Government denounces that this measure planned by the Autonomous Chamber generates "a false expectation by introducing a fictitious future expansion of the area of irrigation".

The Executive assures the Commission that the Hydrological Plan project for the coming years (2022-2027) "does not give any option to increase the extraction of groundwater for irrigation", and adds that the Hydrographic Confederation is "defining, committing and allocating the necessary technical and economic resources” to comply with the ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU.

In addition, the ministry alleges that the future water rights belong to the farmers already regularized today but,

Teresa Ribera's department aligns itself with the Commission and indicates that it shares "the concern" about the Andalusian legal initiative, which "jeopardizes" both the environmental objectives of the Water Framework Directive and the integrity of the ecosystem provided for in the Habitats Directive.

This Wednesday, WWF officials met in Brussels with the European Directorate General for the Environment, "which clarified that if the bill is not withdrawn and the sentence is complied with, Spain will be fined," according to the conservation organization.

The Andalusian Board sent a letter to the European Commission on February 22 to remove iron from the bill and blame it on the Andalusian parliamentary right, as if it were alien to the Ministry and its deputies did not sit on the Governing Council.

The thesis of the regional Executive is that the approval of the norm "has no direct or indirect effect" on compliance with the sentence of the court based in Luxembourg, according

.

In addition, it reduced the hectares benefited by the initiative to only 748, despite the fact that the text of the bill itself puts them at 1,400 hectares.

The strong opposition of the Government contrasts with the position of the Andalusian PSOE, which abstained in the vote for the parliamentary initiative to be launched, an "incomprehensible" decision, according to officials from the PSOE federal leadership.

“Teresa Ribera told me that there were sufficient arguments to vote against.

And I explained to him why we were going to refrain from it.

There is no embarrassing yes here.

The yes is yes and yesterday there was no yes from the PSOE.

I have a clear conscience, ”said the secretary general of the Andalusian Socialists, Juan Espadas, after a parliamentarian from his group alerted Ribera that the PSOE planned to abstain on the controversial measure.

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