The agreement reached between the PSOE and Junts, which provides that in the future the Government can delegate powers over immigration to the Generalitat of Catalonia, has raised enormous political dust despite its absolute lack of specificity, since its scope will have to be detailed in an organic bill yet to be prepared. The Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, has tried in any case this Friday to reduce the alarms encouraged by the right regarding this possible delegation of powers – whose ownership in any case will continue to be the State -, by remembering that, be it Whoever manages them, it is the European Union that dictates the migration policy of its member countries.
Bolaños recalled that last December, precisely during the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union, the new migration and asylum pact of the community club was signed, which in any case has framed this provision for the delegation of powers. to the Generalitat agreed with Junts. “We have to work along those lines,” said the minister. In this European pact, he recalled, “it is clearly established that migration policy is a European policy, and therefore the guidelines come from Europe.” “From there, who exercises jurisdiction is important, but they have to exercise jurisdiction within the guidelines established by the European Migration Pact and the guidelines of the European Commission,” he stressed.
“Within this framework is where the pact we have reached between the PSOE and Junts is deployed, which is basically to promote an organic law to delegate immigration competence,” Bolaños stressed.
The Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, has thus responded to the criticism raised by the Popular Party, but also by the police unions, among other organizations, in addition to the president of Castilla-La Mancha, also a socialist. Emiliano García-Page. “Agreements in democracy are not only good, but they are healthy,” Bolaños argued. “Above all, when they respond to what the citizens voted on July 23, to a very plural Parliament,” he said, regarding the pact of the PSOE with the formation of Carles Puigdemont.
“The agreement that we have reached, and that we have made public with complete clarity, is an agreement by virtue of which an organic law that we have agreed upon between the PSOE and Junts will be promoted to be able to make this delegation of powers regarding immigration.” , I have summarized the minister again. “This organic law, obviously, must be worked on,” he insisted, to reiterate that the scope of this initiative cannot yet be specified. “The agreement is that through this organic law, and therefore through the constitutional channel of article 150.2, this immigration competence can be delegated to, in this case, the Generalitat of Catalonia,” he concluded.
Regarding the contacts that he has had with the Generalitat since the immigration agreement with Junts became known last Wednesday, Bolaños assured that “there is a relationship of cooperation and institutional collaboration between the Government of Spain and the Government of the Generalitat that goes back a long way. ”. In this sense, he recalled that Pedro Sánchez held a meeting with Pere Aragonès last December, at the Palau de la Generalitat, in which up to five agreements were reached. “We are going to meet the government table also during this quarter,” he said.
“There is an absolutely cordial relationship and institutional collaboration, as it could not be otherwise and as it should always have been and was not, because let us remember what the situation was in Catalonia five years ago and what the situation is today, that we are talking about material skills, which affect the lives of citizens,” Bolaños indicated.
And he assured that the conversation he had this Thursday with the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrá, was “totally normal.” “I speak with the councilor, I speak with the president, I speak with Esquerra Republicana, very frequently, with complete normality, always looking for agreements that can benefit the citizens,” he highlighted.
