“Completely in accordance with the law.” It is the conclusion of the report by the lawyers of Congress on the decision made by the progressive majority of the table last week to send to the Official State Gazette the law that accumulates sentences for Spanish prisoners abroad and thus stop the PP’s attempt to delay its publication. The president of the Senate, Pedro Rollán, vetoed the law last week despite the fact that no group had registered amendments or a proposal to reject it. An unprecedented maneuver that twisted the regulations and that the report rejects outright. The Upper House itself, the text says, “is aware that its agreement cannot be directly classified as a veto.”
A brief review of the facts. Last week the Senate voted on a law that accumulates the sentences of prisoners served in other EU countries. A rule that PP and Vox supported in Congress and that they left unamended for weeks in the Upper House. Until it came to light that an amendment included in the text they supported could benefit ETA terrorists. The PP panicked and, a week later, forced the Constitution and the Regulations to open an institutional conflict between the Senate and Congress in order to try to get rid of its responsibility. This is the second attempted clash after the one proposed by the amnesty.
While waiting for the PP to formally propose a clash between institutions before the Constitutional Court, as they have threatened, Congress rejected the Senate’s movement last week and ordered the text to be sent to the Official State Gazette for immediate publication. He did so with the agreement of the progressive majority of the Board and the vote against the PP, after listening to a loud report from the Secretary General of Congress. This newspaper has had access to the report that the lawyers wrote days later in which they defend the agreement reached.
“In general terms, it is necessary to point out that the Congress Board, in its meeting on October 15, acted in accordance with the Constitution and the powers established in the […] Rules of the House,” says the document.
The Senate, says the text of the lawyers, does not affirm in its communication to Congress of the agreements adopted by the Plenary “that a veto has been opposed”, but rather that “the rejection by absolute majority of the Organic Law Project must be understood as such ”. The text provides the exact communication that the Upper House sent to Congress: “The Plenary Session of the Senate, in its session on October 14, 2024, has rejected, by absolute majority, the [citado] Organic Law Project. Having been rejected by the absolute majority of the Senate, which is required by article 90.2 of the Constitution to oppose the veto, in accordance with the provisions of article 106.1 of the Rules of the House, it must be understood that the Plenary of the Senate has vetoed the text, which I inform you in compliance with article 122 of the Regulations.”
And that is when he concludes: “From the above it can be deduced that the Senate itself is aware that its agreement cannot be directly classified as a veto, but that it is simply inferred by that Chamber that it is so due to the fact that the pronouncement was adopted.” by absolute majority.”
“Not in vain, what was put to the vote was not a veto proposal, – which if it had existed and had been approved by such a majority, would have unequivocally meant the opposition of a veto to the legislative initiative in process – but, by direct knowledge, the Organic Law Project, being that the result of this vote could only be one: definitive approval by the Cortes Generales,” the report insists.
#lawyers #Congress #PPs #attempt #reject #law #validates #sentences #Senate #aware #agreement #veto
