Congress has lived a crazy week. The bronco tone was expected in the control session on Wednesday or that the defense policy caused a schism within the government, but as the deputies accumulated hours in their seats, events that have challenged the usual parliamentary logic were happening: the PSOE voted in favor of a law of Junts on Okupation, the veto to some amendments of the Law of Food Waste State of Public Health and add and PP evidenced their willingness to process a law on the taxation of the minimum wage against the Treasury criteria.
Much of what happened has to do with the parliamentary fragility of the government, which reaches each vote with the support to the limit, almost always pending what the seven deputies of Junts do. It is a problem that has been closed since the urns were closed on 23J, but in recent weeks an additional difficulty has appeared: the internal differences in the coalition that have just been reflected in two issues as relevant as the defense policy and the minimum wage.
In Moncloa they started the week satisfied with a new agreement with Junts for the distribution of migrant minors that seemed to consolidate the reconstruction of relations with those of Carles Puigdemont: just a few days ago that they had also sealed an agreement for the delegation of competencies on immigration to Catalonia, one of the issues that most worried the Catalan independentistas. But that apparent calm faded in just two days.
On Thursday the government suffered a parliamentary defeat for the change of opinion at the last minute of the PP and also Juns. The Ministry of Health defended a bill to create a State Public Health Agency that had had broad support during the commission debate. In the department of Mónica García they trusted that tied the ‘Sies’ of Junts and the PP the rule was ahead with more than 300 votes. Although they did not know, those support had begun to crack at least two days before for a reason completely out of that law.
To understand it, you have to travel to the parliamentary process of the Government’s also food waste law. That text was recently approved in Congress and from there it was to the Senate, where the PP has a comfortable absolute majority. Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party introduced two amendments to reduce the VAT of some products: the basic foods from 4% to 2% for 2025 and at 7.5% that of seed oils and food pasta. ERC and Junts introduced two other amendments on the relevant cogeneration plants for what happened next.
During the process, the Government sent to the Senate table a veto request to all these amendments on the grounds that they modified budget items. The Constitution establishes that parliamentary propositions or amendments that affect credits or suppose an increase in public accounts must have the consent of the Ministry of Finance. But the upper house disregarded the executive’s criteria and allowed its processing to advance.
This week the Congress voted the amendments that the Senate had approved on the Law of Waste for its final approval, including those that affected budgets. That is why the Government tried to prevent in extremis that these modifications arrived in the plenary and after consulting the movement with the State Advocacy asked the table of Congress to veto the amendments, a decision on which there is no jurisprudence because it had never occurred. The progressive majority of the table accepted the veto on Tuesday morning and from there the anger of the PP – also of ERC and Junts – that would have its last consequences in the vote on Thursday exploded.
That day, the main opposition party tried by all means of delaying the vote of the waste law for a week. First he requested an extraordinary spokesperson before the plenary, in which he did not achieve the unanimity necessary to change the agenda. Then, during the debate in the Hemicycle, he tried again precisely in the middle of the point for the creation of the State Public Health Agency. He did it among accusations of “prevarication” to Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, who as vice president exercised the presidency of Congress this week replacing Francina Armengol, absent for personal reasons.
During the debate, the deputies led by the spokesman, Miguel Tellado, rose, hit the wood of their seats, protrusped in shouts and tried to boycott the session, although without success. It was after that point when they made the decision to vote against the Health Agency in retaliation for the attitude of the Government and the Presidency of Congress. According to the party, they made the decision after knowing that Juns would not support him either.
“No Spanish agency is above the Catalan farmers,” said the spokeswoman for the independentistas, Míriam Nogueras, asked about her sudden vote change. A phrase that could not hide that they had made the same decision as the PP for the same reasons. The alternative majority of PP, Vox and Juns that appears on some occasions in Congress a law of the Government again knocked down.
That majority was about to settle on Tuesday for the first time throughout the legislature not to knock down a government measure, but to get an initiative to process: a proposition of the Junts law against the squatter, an issue that worries the rights, but that the leftist parties have always disgusted.
That entente between the PP, Junts and Vox would have been evident in the Chamber for the first time if the PSOE had not added, which voted in favor of precisely processed, as an important deputy of the party recognized, to avoid that photograph with the three rights promoting a law. He did it reluctantly because the socialists know that entering the framework of the squatting is dangerous for leftist formation. Most likely, therefore, this law sleeps in a drawer during the rest of the legislature.
Division in government
While all this was happening, the government also faced several episodes of internal division. The first was scheduled: Sumar approved on Monday afternoon vote in favor of a motion of the Galician nationalist bloc that asked to reject the plan to rearm the European Union and leave NATO. In addition, I would vote not to a non -law proposition of the PP that sought the opposite: to make a defense of the rise in military spending and support for Ukraine.
Although adding tried to negotiate with the PSOE a common position through amendments to the motion of the BNG, both in Tuesday’s debate and in the vote of those points on Thursday the fracture in the government on this issue was evident. Pedro Sánchez’s party ended up rejecting the initiative of the PP, which did not allow it to vote for points and included one that for the socialists was difficult to support given the position they have maintained on the matter: a section that requested that all issues on defense were voted in Congress. But at the same time he voted against the key points of the BNG motion while adding them.
In the middle of the week, the Ministry of Finance also confirmed that it will apply a veto – also for budgetary reasons – to the initiatives that are registered in Congress, one of them to add, so that the minimum wage (SMI) is exempt from paying the IRPF, a fight that began a month ago in the Executive and that will have the next chapter next week at the table of Congress.
Addar has already anticipated its intention to unite its votes to the PP to twist the finance plans and raise the government veto in that organ so that the initiatives begin to be processed. The plurinational group is willing to reach the end with this issue, so the clash between the two government parties has only begun.
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