There is white smoking. After more than a year of negotiations, the PSOE and Junts have reached an agreement that will be formalized “imminent” on the delegation of immigration competences to the Generalitat committed in its day by the Government in exchange for the parliamentary support of the seven deputies of Carles Puigdemont in Congress. The pact, advanced by Catalan regional television and confirmed by eldiario.es, will be registered foreseeably this week in Congress in the form of law proposition.
At the moment, neither the socialists nor together advance the content of the agreement, which in recent weeks had enchanted by the independence demand that the control of borders recays exclusively in the Mossos d’Esquadra, something that from the Moncloa and from the Interior Ministry was described in its day as “outside the Constitution”. Junts also aspired that the Catalan police would be in charge of now on both the issuance of identity documentation for foreign presonses and the expulsion processes, two aspects that also rejected socialists.
According to this newspaper, the Government worked for months in the elaboration of an Organic Law on immigration management in which up to five ministerial departments have been involved: the first, interior, exterior vice presidency, immigration and presidency. According to the sources consulted aware of that negotiation, that text will open the door for the Autonomous Communities that require it, and not only Catalonia, can assume competences in the field of reception and integration of immigrant people arriving at each territory. Something that the Executive also defends as a “logical step” so that the social services of the municipalities and autonomous communities have more weight in the social inclusion process of these people.
It has also been negotiated that this text includes some formula that contemplates that the Mossos d’Esquadra, a police force that is part of the State Security Forces and Bodies, can participate in accompaniment work during some very specific border operations. Or that even these can issue mandatory reports on possible expulsions, although in any case with intact state powers for ministries such as interior or foreign affairs.
From the Executive they have recalled during the negotiation that the European border legislation is under the umbrella of the Schengen space, a free circulation agreement between 29 European countries by which controls on the interior borders (between those countries) and transferred those controls to the exterior borders (with third countries) are suppressed. Something similar to what happens with the management of expulsions, sponsored in most cases in bilateral agreements between states with countries of origin to be able to carry out repatriation.
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