PSOE maintains its ties with PNV and Junts despite PP courtship and lost votes

The PSOE and Sumar Government has started this week parliamentary activity in Congress with a couple of symbolic defeats, very similar to what happened before the summer, but no one in either of those two coalition parties is expressing any concern or nervousness about it. Not because of the fact that these warnings were caused by a specific disengagement of the PNV, which quickly clarified to the Government in private and publicly that this distancing and coincidence with the PP was “temporary and coincidental”, or because of the absence of the Junts deputies, who are increasingly unpredictable. The Government The PP maintains that its bridges remain intact with PNV and Junts, and the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, has contrasted this with both investiture partners. The PP, however, conveys that it wants to court both groups more in order to provoke more parliamentary defeats for the Government and underline its weakness before the legislative power, especially in the economic sphere, on the eve of the arduous negotiation of the Budgets.

Since the beginning of the 15th legislature, the great gap for the Government in Parliament is and remains the same: the seven parliamentarians of Junts. The rest of its allies have shown greater loyalty than in the last legislature, when they had great difficulties in approving issues such as the labour reform or some extensions of the state of alarm, and even Sánchez’s investiture was obtained by a single vote difference. In that context, in that legislature the Executive promoted more than 215 legislative initiatives.

In this mandate, the situation, despite the noise and the parliamentary fuss of the PP, is not very different. Of the 26 legislative texts directly sponsored by the Executive and voted on in the plenary session until this Thursday, ERC, EH Bildu and PNV have supported all of them. The BNG has only failed once and Podemos, twice. Junts, on the other hand, has distanced itself on eight of those occasions, twice as many as a force that is not usually considered part of the Government’s allies like Coalición Canaria. The Government was also forced to withdraw the Land Law, although in this case it was its own minority partner, Sumar, that was against it, and the PSOE found itself with the rejection of all its allies to a proposal presented on its own from the parliamentary group to toughen the penalties for pimps.

Of the thirty defeats suffered by the Government in the plenary session, those that have had the greatest consequences on the legislative process have been the recent failure and halt of the reform of the immigration law, the first attempt at amnesty and a decree to modify unemployment benefits. In all of them, the lack of support from Junts – and in the last case also from Podemos – was decisive. Both the amnesty and the reform of the subsidy were later approved after negotiating changes in the texts.

Most of the government’s defeats have occurred in motions or non-legislative proposals, mere pronouncements without any legal value, as has happened this week. And in many cases, they did not even affect the whole of the initiatives, but only some specific points. The PP has often tried the strategy of asking for a vote by points for this type of initiative to facilitate a specific defeat of the executive forces and thus swell the statistics. On the other hand, it gave up doing the same with the proposal on Venezuela, once it had guaranteed the support of the PNV, despite the fact that several of its points had also had the support of the PSOE.

In the plenary session on Wednesday, the PP achieved a very symbolic victory when its non-binding, non-binding, motion to urge the Government to recognise Edmundo González as the elected president of Venezuela was approved, contrary to the prudence that Pedro Sánchez’s Executive wants to impose in order to go hand in hand with the rest of the countries of the European Union. The proposal triumphed thanks to the final support of the PNV, which had already been provided by Vox, UPN and Coalición Canaria. The PNV did not like this circumstantial alliance at all, due to the political and media interpretations that were constructed in Madrid, and immediately stepped forward to clarify that this support, based on historical and emotional reasons supported by the important Basque community in that country, did not mean anything more and much less any distancing from the Executive or an approximation to Feijóo’s PP. That message, however, did not reach as much as the PNV would have liked and this Thursday the parliamentary spokesman, Aitor Esteban, insisted to clear up any doubts: “As long as they comply with what was agreed, we will be there,” he said. in an interview on Antena 3referring to the investiture agreement that remains intact between the PSOE and the PNV.

To reinforce this position of “normality” in their relations, the president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, and Esteban himself have had a meal with Minister Bolaños in Madrid this Thursday, as they usually do more often during the year. The meeting this Thursday had been agreed since July and the date was set a couple of weeks ago, according to sources from the Basque party, and therefore it is not related to the votes registered this week in Congress and to “the interpretation that a sector of public opinion has made of them”.

The PNV has thus sought to downplay the political significance of these parliamentary setbacks this week and reminds us that their legal effects are null. Esteban, however, took it for granted that Sánchez’s Executive will continue to suffer defeats of this type in Congress, finding itself in a precarious position, with a parliamentary base in which it is “very difficult to get everyone to agree every time.” But he asked to distinguish “between what goes to the Bulletin [BOE] and what does not go to the Bulletin”, that is, legislative activity and other initiatives such as motions and non-legislative proposals that are mere “pronouncements”. What Esteban did recommend to Sánchez, given the fragility of his position in Congress, is that he be “selective” in the bills he sends to the Cortes and be satisfied with “little things”.

These complaints and laments by the PNV about the Government’s negotiating methods are not very different from those of other parties, regular or occasional partners. Junts, engaged in defining its own future and leadership, has warned numerous times that it will only support what is convenient for Catalonia, but the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, held a talk this Wednesday in the Government area of ​​Congress with the spokesperson for that party, Míriam Nogueras, to reaffirm that their bridges and contacts are still ongoing and in force. Junts specified that these conversations have not yet borne fruit in anything, neither on the reform of the immigration law nor on the draft state budget for 2025, despite the pressure for these reforms to advance from the Catalan business community and employers.