A high-voltage plenary session: the Government will pressure the PP after Junts' refusal to validate the anti-crisis measures

With the year barely started, the Government is experiencing these first days of January immersed in a frenetic negotiation process until next Wednesday. During that day, Congress will debate both the two amendments to the entire PP and Vox amnesty law and the three decrees approved by the Executive in December. Junts announced this Friday that it will vote against the texts, on which both the continuity of anti-crisis measures and the receipt of 10 billion euros of European funds depend. From La Moncloa they do not want to leave any vine unlaunched and will put pressure on the popular ones, whose autonomous communities would be directly affected if Brussels turns off the tap, in addition to putting pressure on Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party with the economic consequences that bringing down the party would entail for the citizens. the social shield, according to government sources. In parallel, contacts will be maintained until the last moment with Junts, but the Executive flatly refuses to give in to one of its conditions: changing the decrees for new texts. Nor is a yes from other parties like Podemos or PNV guaranteed. The tension, they anticipate, could last until just before the plenary session.

The high-voltage session will begin on Wednesday at nine in the morning in the Senate, as Congress is in progress. The Lower House will discuss that day in an extraordinary plenary session both the amendments to the entire amnesty law, with the frontal opposition of the forces of the right, and the ratification of three decrees: the one that extends a large part of the anti-crisis package to 2024 , the decree bus which includes other measures related to the receipt of European funds – such as the digitalization of Justice – and a third on conciliation measures from the Ministry of Labor. Everyone is capsized due to Junts' refusal. And the Government fears that they will keep the pulse.

Carles Puigdemont's party maintains that the text that affects Justice “endangers” the application of the grace measure to those prosecuted by the processes. European jurisprudence contradicts this argument and shows that in practice nothing would change. Junts rejects the other two texts because it believes that part of the content of the parliamentary initiatives invades the powers of the Generalitat and aggravates its “underfinancing”, according to sources from the Catalan party.

The organization secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, and the general secretary of the independence party, Jordi Turull, held an unsuccessful meeting this Thursday. At the moment, the positions are completely opposed as Junts rejects the three decrees and the Government refuses to replace them with new texts. Contacts will be maintained until the end with the Catalans but, in the meantime, the Government is focusing on the PP, which will be put under pressure during these days to achieve a favorable vote from the popular people for the three parliamentary initiatives, provisionally in force until they are ratified. .

Feijóo advanced this Friday in an interview in the digital newspaper The debate that he is “willing” to agree on the validation of the decree of anti-crisis measures if the Government adds three amendments. The opposition leader demands as conditions: apply a personal income tax reduction to incomes of less than 40,000 euros, include meat, fish and preserved foods in the VAT reduction on food and that the VAT reduction on gas be maintained. and electricity at the same rate as last year—5% instead of 10%.

The problem for the popular ones is that several factors are mixed in their decision to support or not the decrees. On the one hand, the loss of financing that the non-validation of the decree would imply weighs on their shoulders. bus for the regional presidents of the PP. It depended on the approval of this text for Spain to be able to collect the fourth installment of the Next Generation funds worth 10,000 million euros. A huge source of income that reverts to the communities, of which 11 are governed by the PP.

On the other hand, if the popular vote in favor of the decrees happens, this movement would take place in the midst of a struggle with Vox to determine who gives the most against Sánchez in the run-up to the new electoral cycle. A fight that was fueled this Wednesday with the registration of their respective amendments to the amnesty law. The PP proposes in its alternative text the dissolution of parties that promote declarations of independence or illegal referendums, a position previously defended by those of Santiago Abascal and that those of Feijóo had rejected. “What hypocrisy. They are Jews, they say one thing and do the opposite, they are false,” Madrid councilor Javier Ortega-Smith said in this regard this Thursday.

The PP now plays with another trump card to attack the Executive during the debate: Junts' resistance to voting in favor of the decrees. “Pedro Sánchez's hair ball is going to get very thick in his throat,” say sources from the popular leadership. “He has the big battle at the end of the year, and in 2025, which is the Catalans. With a very clear rivalry, Junts and Esquerra, where that is going to lead to a very powerful contradiction because every day they are fighting for the same thing: who has the most weight. It is going to be very difficult to legislate. When your partners want to weaken you as a Government and as a State, it is very difficult to reach solid agreements,” they add.

During the plenary session, the PP will make a fierce defense of its amendment to the entire amnesty law which, in addition to proposing the dissolution of parties, hits squarely in its explanatory statement on the content of the law based on pronouncements from Brussels, of the Court of Justice of the European Union and in doctrine of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, which in their opinion support their opposition to the grace measure, which they see as mere payment for Sánchez to be inaugurated.

The other opponent of the PP, next Wednesday, will be Abascal, whose attacks against the popular party have intensified. Vox was quick last Friday to harshly censure that Feijóo was open to validating the anti-crisis measures. “Mr. Feijóo has not found out or does not want to find out that the coup d'état that Pedro Sánchez is carrying out expels him from legality and prevents any political agreement,” the ultra party wrote in X. “Only Vox is clear about it: infinite distance with this Government and its coup plotters, terrorists and communists,” he added. They also have another element, revealed this week, to confront the popular party: the meeting that the PP spokesperson in Barcelona City Council, Daniel Sirera, held with two senior Junts officials in a hotel in mid-August. Abascal already used, during the first plenary session on the measure of grace, half of his intervention time to charge against Feijóo.

The Government will have to escape the fierce attacks from the right in the chamber. The Executive may wave a cocktail against the PP that mixes the Popular Party's meeting with Junts in the summer, the criticism from the legal community of the proposal to dissolve parties and the condemnation, but with reservations, of the Popular Party's beating of a Sánchez doll on New Year's Eve. . The Government usually counters the arguments against the amnesty with the defense of social protection and anti-crisis measures, which are debated during the same session. The point is to arrive with their approval tied. And there are three days of agonizing negotiation ahead.

In a first version of this news it said that the parliamentary spokesperson of the PP, Miguel Tellado, had maintained contacts and meetings with the PSOE “these weeks”, according to sources in Genoa. This newspaper points out that with these contacts it was not referring to negotiations over the decrees, but to previous situations.

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