The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, will meet again this November 6 in Madrid and will constitute a bilateral commission to accelerate and complete the pending transfers of the 1979 Statute – of which this Friday the deadline was fulfilled. forty-fifth anniversary – before the end of 2025, including the management of the Social Security economic regime. It is an example of Sánchez’s harmony with Pradales, with whom he has already met twice in the barely four months he has been in office. The first of them, in July, marked only the third visit by a president to the Ajuria Enea palace in Vitoria and the previous ones were by Adolfo Suárez at the beginning of democracy and by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero after the end of ETA.
“The holding of the first meeting of the bilateral body will be held in Madrid and is the result of the commitment reached on September 20 between Imanol Pradales and Pedro Sánchez to convene the bilateral commission and advance the cooperation agenda between both Governments and the transfer of the pending powers of the Statute of Gernika,” the Basque Presidency reported this Saturday. There had been talk of the end of October as a reference for its constitution but it has been delayed a week.
The bilateral commission is provided for in the Statute but has never met. There are operating rules established in 1987 with Joaquín Almunia as Felipe González’s minister and Juan Ramón Guevara as José Antonio Ardanza’s advisor and which indicate, among other points, that the meetings will be held either in Madrid or in Vitoria. The model now imitates for Euskadi the forum created in Catalonia to return to the path of agreements after the ‘procés’ and 155. It so happens that Urkullu demanded it insistently in the last stretch of his mandate, both publicly and by letter, without ever having the desired photograph.
Pradales and Sánchez cling to the agreement signed by the PNV for the 2023 investiture. In it, the PSOE promised to complete all the pending matters of the Statute in 2025. The nationalists put that list of pending matters at 29. In fact, they want half a dozen transfers already in 2024. These are Maritime Salvage, coastal management, film funds, the situation of Aemet – which now coexists without an agreement with Euskalmet – and other matters related to work authorizations for foreigners, private security or a State center in Barakaldo.
For the following year, the most complex issues would remain, headed by the management of Social Security, which would imply that Euskadi would assume the processing of the 12,000 million budget of the pension system and the ownership of the buildings and officials of that State body. It is something that has never before been transferred to an autonomous community, but the Statute itself provides that the legislation and the amounts would continue to be common for all of Spain and that the ‘single fund’ will not be broken. Pradales has also been including for some time the transfer of the so-called “passive employment policies”, that is, the management of unemployment benefits. The active employment policies – training, orientation and hiring – were agreed upon with Patxi López as Lehendakari and led to the creation of Lanbide as a replacement for the old Inem.
More controversy is raised by some claims about infrastructure made by the PNV and from which the PSE-EE, a partner in Euskadi, has already distanced itself in some public statements. The management of airports and ports is in demand. However, the Constitution states that these facilities are the exclusive responsibility of the State if they are of “general interest.” In fact, the ports have already been transferred except in the cases of the two main ones, Bilbao and Pasaia, where through agreements the Basque Government can influence their appointments, a tool that the PNV has historically used. One fact: the president of the port of Bilbao is the former PNV leader Ricardo Barkala and this week Antonio Aiz, also ‘jeltzale’, who had just left his position as general director of the Basque Water Agency (URA), has been appointed as director. ). The ports could only be transferred if they lose that label of “general interest” and are demoted, with all that this would imply at an economic level. As for airports, in Catalonia a model has already been agreed upon in which smaller aerodromes and heliports would be managed by a regional body, but El Prat, for example, continues to be part of the Aena network.
Pradales has already verbalized that after completing the 1979 Statute he wants to address a reform to obtain more powers. The national recognition of Euskadi is also committed to Sánchez, but the Basque socialists, this week, have considered it a “real threat” that the PNV could rescue sovereignist positions. The PSE-EE understands that the right to decide is a “red line”.
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