While the focus is on the transfer of the management of the commuter rail service (Rodalies) to the Generalitat or the possible disappearance of the structure of the Tax Administration Agency (AEAT) of the territory to leave control of the Catalan fiscal space to the Tax Agency of Catalonia, below the radar the Government continues to advance in the transfer of powers to certain autonomies, although not without difficulties.
The last objective is the recruitment, selection and appointment of auditors, secretaries and treasurers that ensure the proper management of city council resources and the observance of the legal principles that govern their operation. In a matter of days, the Government has taken fundamental steps to, on the one hand, protect the transfer of its regulatory regulations to the Basque Country, whose practical application is suspended by a court ruling and whose substance is also being appealed to the courts; and, on the other hand, open the door to the exercise of new powers in this field by the Generalitat of Catalonia.
According to their own name, the auditors, secretaries and treasurers of the town councils are local officials with national qualifications and, therefore, are a body dependent on the stateto which the call for positions, the management of the selection processes and the filling of vacancies is reserved. However, in the territory of the Basque Country, as has been the case for decades in Navarra, this is no longer the case.
One of the results of the political negotiation of the 2023 Budgets It was the transfer to the Basque Government of regulatory powers over national authorizations in its territory, which allows them to select and appoint their own auditors and municipal secretaries under their rules and requirements without depending on the State.
Two long years after this maneuver the 177 places called by the Basque Government remain unfilled by a string of resolutions that question the constitutionality of the requirements imposed by Vitoria to apply for these positions and specifically the imposition of high levels of proficiency in Basque to apply for positions, and not as a merit to obtain a better score.
Judicial ordeal
Not only is the practical application of the transfer of powers being conflictive, but also the transfer itself. The recent organic law on the efficiency of the justice service, which the Government has turned into a catch-all for all types of measurementshas completed the Government’s third attempt to regulate this transfer peacefully after the Constitutional Court overturned the first attempt to do so through the 2023 Budget Law and the Royal Decree Law was approved by emergency to undo the wrong faces a similar judicial future.
He fix has not convinced the group and from Cosital, one of the platforms that represents municipal auditors, secretaries and treasurers, an appeal of unconstitutionality to the measure has already been announced. «Legislation is being forced in a tortuous manner to try to push through a political compromise. The reason for being of the national authorized persons is national since their function is to provide a Equal minimum legal service in all municipalities from Spain,” explains Rafael Santiago, vice president of Cosital.
And now, Catalonia
The Government opened another front with the announcement of a management assignment to the Generalitat so that Manage the selection process of 218 auditors, secretaries and treasurers for the Catalan town councils. The fact that the move was made in the midst of an extraordinary nationwide call for 1,000 vacancies – the group has been denouncing for some time the lack of coverage of 4,500 vacancies – has fueled suspicions that an attempt is being made to sneak in a transfer. jurisdiction to the Generalitat.
This is how another of the union’s associations, Apsital, interprets it, which conveyed in a note its suspicions that this management assignment “covers up a transfer of jurisdiction in clear fraud of law». On paper it is only about decentralizing the selection process but the statements made by the Catalan Minister of the Presidency regarding the ambition of the Generalitat to assume the powers of the process have raised alarm. The fear is that the first steps are being taken to transfer to the CC.AA: the powers of selection and appointment of auditors and secretaries. The union believes that the delicate function they perform is all the more autonomous the further away the person responsible for their appointments is.
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