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The first coalition government approves 155 laws in a state of permanent tension

2022-08-12T16:09:07.322Z


More than 50% of the legislative initiatives correspond to validated decree laws, of which nearly half are due to extraordinary measures due to covid, the La Palma volcano and the war in Ukraine


The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, on the second day of the debate on the state of the nation, on July 13. EDUARDO PARRA

Betray trust, hide information or maneuver on the sly.

The serious accusations that the partners of the coalition government have crossed have stressed La Moncloa since the legislature began, which has been two and a half years since.

The attacks between the two partners have intensified during the recently closed political year, once the blow of the pandemic has stopped and La Moncloa has been able, to a greater or lesser extent, to face the legislative promises that came after the embrace of Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias.

With the former leader of Podemos out of the Executive, the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, has assumed the weight of the tensions in the Council of Ministers.

The state of permanent tension and the fragile parliamentary arithmetic have not prevented the carrying out of 155 legislative initiatives: 71 laws,

83 royal decrees and one legislative royal decree.

On the near horizon there are three more decrees pending validation —such as the controversial text of measures for energy saving— and the final phase of a dozen laws

of special depth before the end of the year;

this is the case of the “only yes is yes” and Housing.

One of the latest internal struggles was triggered after the approval in the Council of Ministers of a credit for the Ministry of Defense of up to 1,000 million.

Díaz called for an urgent meeting of the coalition monitoring commission, which was intended to be the sixth of the meetings of the crisis cabinet called to meet every time the tension rises in tone.

The armistice was signed without holding the meeting.

The Minister of Labor and the President of the Government agreed not to harm each other by meeting alone before leaving on vacation.

The spending of resources has been one of the biggest points of friction between the partners.

But not the only one.

The General State Budget Law is, precisely, one of the regulations that will have to be discussed and negotiated in the parliamentary period that will resume at the end of August.

The public accounts presented by the Ministry of Finance last year achieved the support of ERC, PNV, Bildu, PDeCAT, Más País, Nueva Canarias, Compromís, Teruel Exists and PRC.

But recent discrepancies with the government's parliamentary partners, such as Esquerra, have complicated the approval of the government's legislative projects in recent months.

More information

Sánchez and Díaz, condemned to understand each other

Among other reasons, the rejection of the Republicans to the labor reform proposed by the Government precipitated that this 2022 started with one of the craziest chapters that are remembered in Congress: a decree validated thanks to the error of the PP deputy Alberto Casero, who He voted against his party.

The months prior to this surreal episode passed with Yolanda Díaz and the first vice president, Nadia Calviño, adjusting the terms of the law in the midst of extreme tension.

A negotiation that led to the fifth and last meeting, this time, of the coalition monitoring commission, in October last year.

The labor reform is one of the 155 legislative initiatives that have been definitively approved so far in the legislature.

If these data are compared with those of the same period (two and a half years) of the 10th legislature —in which Mariano Rajoy governed with an absolute majority and, therefore, with total freedom to carry out the proposals of the popular party—, the Government of coalition has approved 19 laws more than the one of Rajoy, according to the data of the Ministry of Presidency and Relations with the Cortes.

The department headed by Félix Bolaños has had to carry out negotiating work that has intensified in recent months as a result of disagreements with ERC, which was presumed to be one of its supports.

None of the parliamentary partners gave carte blanche to the Executive after the investiture, so many laws have had to be agreed

in extremis.

Not only from the coalition itself, but also in subsequent parliamentary procedures.

More than 50% of legislative decrees

The procedures are shortened, and they can be circumvented, when the legislative initiatives are developed by means of a decree.

This is the case of the labor reform and the latest package of energy-saving measures to harmonize the European Union's claims agreed at an extraordinary council of ministers held at the end of July in Brussels.

The Government has already begun talks so that Congress validates the energy standard soon.

It will be "one of the first measures" that the Chamber will address when the parliamentary course resumes.

The negotiation is not expected to be easy.

"Things can always be done better, but it is not true that there has been no dialogue", said Jaume Asens in response to the accusations of lack of communication with the Autonomous Communities.

The president of the United We Can group also announced this Thursday in an interview with RNE that the negotiating machinery is already underway.

The PNV, one of the partners of the Executive, has already expressed its doubts about the application of the decree.

Meanwhile, the main opposition party persists in the frontal attack on the Executive for energy saving measures.

The Deputy Secretary of Organization of the PP, Miguel Tellado, released artillery again yesterday from San Sebastian.

Precisely, alluding to the legislative production of the coalition.

"The Government of Sánchez has become accustomed to impositions with more than 120 decrees in the legislature, because dialogue is quite bad even between the parties that make up the Executive."

But there are 83 and not 120 decrees validated since the inauguration of this Government, plus another three approved by the Council of Ministers that have to be ratified in Congress in less than a month —of the 86, 15 correspond to 2022—.

As other previous Executives did,

Article 86 of the Constitution states that “in case of extraordinary and urgent need, the Government may issue provisional legislative provisions that will take the form of Decree-laws”, which must be validated within a maximum period of 30 days from the approval of the Minister council.

And since Sánchez arrived at Moncloa, anomalous situations have been precipitating one after another: the pandemic, the eruption of the La Palma volcano and the war in Ukraine.

About half of the decrees are due to these extraordinary events.

Going back to the comparison with the first stage of Rajoy —and taking into account the first two and a half years of the X legislature of the PP—, of the 136 legislative initiatives approved, 56 were by decree, 41.17%.

Nevertheless,

When an Executive governs with an absolute majority, the use of the decree is less decisive in the final result, since the approval of any law is guaranteed in Congress.

And, to a lesser extent, in a simple majority government with more stable parliamentary support.

what is to come

In addition to the three decrees pending validation, it is expected that by the end of August and during the month of September —with the resumption of the political course—, three relevant laws will be definitively sanctioned: the Science Law, the Bankruptcy Law and the “yes it is Yes".

Laws that already have one foot in the BOE after passing the Senate and only require their return to Congress.

The rule of "yes is yes" is another example of tensions within the Council of Ministers, and that finally went ahead when the PSOE withdrew the amendment on prostitution that put its approval at risk.

Between September and the end of the year there are another ten outstanding laws whose parliamentary processing is well advanced and which will reach port before January 2023. Among them, the Law of Democratic Memory, Official Secrets, 'trans law' or Housing.

In addition to the general budgets.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-08-12

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