Although parliamentary activity has picked up some pace in recent weeks, the difficulties that the Government suffers in articulating a stable majority are visible. In recent months, PSOE and Sumar have suffered some significant defeats in Congress, but the progressive coalition is also having problems advancing on a handful of legislative initiatives that it processed urgently and yet they have still been in the amendment deadline for weeks. some even several months.
The list of initiatives in the amendment period that Congress handles is eloquent. There are 13 bills that the Government asked to process through the emergency procedure and that remain stuck since their parliamentary path began. The Board approves each week the extension of the deadlines for amendments so that the laws do not automatically fall. And some of those texts have been immobile since March.
The emergency procedure is a prerogative that enables the congressional regulations so that the deadlines are shortened to half of what was stipulated. It is regulated by articles 93 and 94 of that text: “Without prejudice to the provisions of article 91 of this Regulation, the terms will have a duration of half of those established on an ordinary basis.”
The technique is common. The Government during the last legislature took advantage of this procedure in almost half of the laws that it sent to the Lower House, although it did not prevent many of them from remaining in parliamentary limbo for even years, such as the start-up law or what is known as the Law Rhodes.
In this legislature, the Government is having difficulties in carrying out its bills. So far, it has achieved final approval of four texts. The parity law, the artistic education law, another for the creation of an independent accident investigation authority and finally the criminal record law that caused a political imbroglio in recent weeks. A few weeks ago the PP raised a question of powers before the Constitutional Court in this regard.
Meanwhile there are some bills that have been waiting for progress since March. For example, the Family Law and the text that regulates customer services or the law to create a copyright office. They are, furthermore, initiatives that the Government approved in the last legislature but declined with the dissolution of the Cortes after the early elections. Until recently, this list also included some recovered from the previous period that have begun to be debated in committee, such as sustainable mobility.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced last month, in an appearance before the Lower House, that they would soon approve a new family law. “We are going to approve a new family law that will expand the rights of single-parent families, large families, families with migrants or with a member with a disability,” he said.
He was referring, however, to the same text that has been in Congress since March 18. Since then, there have been up to 24 extensions of the amendment deadline due to repeated complaints from Sumar. The text that came out of the Council of Ministers at the beginning of the year recovered the initiative that the Ministry of Social Rights of Ione Belarra approved during the last legislature and then the emergency mechanism was activated. More than a year and a half later, with a change of Government, the text is still waiting for its processing to be activated.
This law explains some of the reasons that lead the progressive majority at the table to hold back many initiatives: the lack of consensus for them to move forward. Sometimes, discrepancies occur even within the Government despite the fact that the law has the approval of the Council of Ministers.
In this case, Sumar accepted that the text came out of the Government with some deficits that he promised to solve in the parliamentary process. The idea handled by Pablo Bustinduy’s Ministry is to amend its own project to include 20-week birth permits and remuneration for at least four of the eight weeks of parental care leave that are already in force.
This negotiation is linked to that of the General State Budgets. Sumar has included the improvement of these permits in its proposals for public accounts for 2025 that the Government is trying to get out in multi-party talks, with Junts as the main obstacle. It is likely, therefore, that if the accounts are unlocked, this law will finally do so as well. Although everything depends on whether the PSOE is open to including the remuneration of the permits or those of Yolanda Díaz give in on a point that they consider essential.
Something similar happens with the Sustainable Mobility Law, which also declined during the last legislature and that the Ministry of Transport, now directed by Óscar Puente, recovered at the beginning of the year. Congress agreed to process it on March 4 and until recently it remained in the amendment period.
During the full debate, which the Government barely managed to save, several of the parliamentary partners raised their objections to the text as it stands now, among them Sumar, who criticized that the project does not include issues such as the obligation to achieve neutrality. climate in the sector before 2050. The law already had much of its content rejected by Unidas Podemos during the last legislature.
And this is the case with many others, such as the Law on Universality of the National Health System, since mid-June during the amendment period; the law of civil liability in the circulation of motor vehicles; the law to establish a special tax on multinationals, which came into effect at the end of June; or since September the law to prohibit evictions of vulnerable groups, a decree that the Government promised to process into law and which has been on hold since September; a law on greenhouse gases and another on Cinema and Audiovisual Culture, which entered on September 10 or the public service law that entered at the end of that month.
Parliamentary sources point out in any case that this situation is not new. During the last legislature, many laws were urgently processed but remained in limbo for months and even years until they fell or were unblocked. Unlike the Senatethe regulations of Congress do not have a regulated maximum limit on the period of amendments for laws that are processed urgently.
The usual technique is that many bills are processed with this procedure as an almost automatic mechanism and that they remain in the dormancy of the amendments until there is a political agreement that allows them to be activated in the relevant committees.
This is what has happened recently with the ALS law, which has been dormant in Congress for years and was finally approved this month when all groups reached an agreement to unblock it.
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