If everything goes as the Ministry of Health Wait, Congress will approve next week the law materialized by the State Public Health Agency. The norm, whose process began three years ago, faces this Thursday at a decisive step in the Health Commission of the Lower House. The team led by Minister Mónica García (Sumar) assumes that the opinion of the law that will be voted will be ahead with the support of all parliamentary groups, except Vox. It would be the first rule of adding that this procedure reaches, prior to the final debate in the Plenary, in the Legislature.
After a year of negotiations, in February the way to consensus was raided when all the parliamentarians of the commission, except those of Santiago Abascal, signed a common text in the report of the presentation. That text already incorporated some proposed changes for each group through transactional amendments that are tied, according to ministerial sources. This Thursday will only discuss those that have not been accepted. The Popular Party, to questions from this newspaper, does not advance its position in the vote but confirms that ten of its amendments have been accepted. Junts has refused to answer.
11 years late
If the Health Commission gives a green light by majority to the project, as health expected, the law would be ready to be sent to the Plenary of the Congress and definitively approve next week. A milestone that has been delayed a decade.
The Minister of Health, Mónica García, said two weeks ago that the State Public Health Agency was a “debt” with Spanish society since the General Public Health Law was approved in 2011. This rule promoted the creation of this body but never came true.
Until the pandemic arrived. The Government reactivated that idea nine years later and in 2022 he presented, with Minister Carolina Darias to the head of Health, the first draft law. Already then, several public health experts celebrated the step after being “long delayed.” However, the 2023 general elections interrupted the process again and in January 2024 had to be approved again in the Council of Ministers with Garcia as the new head of the portfolio.
The Government did not have them all at the beginning: the project was about to derail in February 2023 by presenting together and PNVs two amendments to the whole to return the law to the government on the grounds that they invaded their powers. The final text of the law includes the specific functions that the agency will have to “ensure that regional competences in public health are not reduced,” Ministerial Sources say. All reports that emanate from this new body, which will depend on the Ministry of Health, will have to go through the Interterritorial Health Council.
Among the main functions of the Agency will be the coordination of public health surveillance, the evaluation of health risks, the preparation and alert in health crises, transfer information to the citizenship before the risk and provide assistance, advice and support to any public institution or autonomous community that requires it.
Two of the issues that have aroused more interest is who will direct it and where it will be. The Popular Party requested that the appointments be endorsed by a majority of the Congress and the Senate. The project guarantees that it will be “autonomous” and “independent”. As for the headquarters, Garcia recalled that there are several candidate cities to host it, although the decision will correspond to the Ministry of Territorial Policy.
“It seems relatively easy to find consensus on certain articles, but it is not so much when what matters, in the background, is not the article, but the correlation of forces between parties. The conditions for this minimum consensus seem to have met in recent weeks, ”said the Spanish Society of Public Health (Sespas) at the beginning of March, very critical of delays. This Thursday is confirmed if this consensus translates into votes.
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