“One thing has nothing to do with the other”, warned Pedro Sánchez before the debate on the reform of the crime of sedition, on the one hand, and the processing of the new general budgets of the State, on the other. A processing of the accounts that in any case the Government already sees on track this Friday after Esquerra, in addition to the PNV and EH Bildu, have chosen not to present return amendments, while the reform of the Penal Code to reduce the penalties of the crime of sedition continues without, in the opinion of the President of the Government, the parliamentary majority necessary to address it. At least, Sánchez has warned, “as of today”.
At the end of the European Council held in Brussels, Sánchez has once again shown his willingness to reform the Penal Code. “I think that 2017 left us some lessons of duties and tasks that we have pending in democracy for a long time, 40 years to this part”, he warned, about the illegal self-determination referendum and the fleeting unilateral declaration of independence in Catalonia that ended with judicial sentences for crimes of sedition. “We have a Criminal Code that, in some of the crimes, is not comparable to the main European democracies. And this is not something that politics says, it is what the criminal lawyers themselves say”, he pointed out.
“It is evident that this cannot be an exercise in theory”, warned the Chief Executive. “If that commitment has to be forged and materialized, it has to be in the Cortes Generales, and for that we need parliamentary support”, he explained. “And we have to see if we have that parliamentary support. To this day, it does not seem that we have that parliamentary support”, Sánchez reiterated.
The President of the Government has assured, however, that he maintains his “personal commitment” from the investiture speech to reform and standardize the crime of sedition in Europe. “The Government will comply, if there is a parliamentary majority”, he has settled.
Regarding the draft general state budget for 2023, whose processing has been cleared for the vote to be held next Thursday in Congress on the entire amendments, Sánchez has valued the political and institutional stability that the approval of new accounts before the end of this year. The Chief Executive has given the example of the United Kingdom, after the resignation of Liz Truss after just 45 days as Prime Minister, to highlight “the need to have stable governments”. Sánchez has thus highlighted “the value of political stability at a time of extraordinary uncertainty”, in the midst of an energy and inflationary crisis unleashed by Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
“The Government, with all the complexity of the situation it is dealing with, is granting political stability at a time of high uncertainty, which is what Spaniards deserve and need,” Sánchez underlined. In addition, he has assured that the Executive is putting forward proposals, both for the transformation and modernization of the economy to guarantee solid growth, job creation and the reindustrialization of the country, in digitalization and ecological transition, as well as in the protection of the middle class and workers with a “fair distribution of the burden” through new taxes on the main energy companies and financial entities, and on the great fortunes.
At the “heart” of all these transformation and protection plans, Sánchez pointed out, are the general budgets of the State. And he has thanked all the political forces that have not presented amendments to the totality that allow the entry of the budget in the Cortes, its debate, “and hopefully future approval.” The head of the Executive has highlighted that the third budgets that are approved “in a timely manner” would be like this, which he has warned has not happened since 2015.
“This government, which has always been criticized for many things, with 153 seats -Sánchez pointed out, referring to those corresponding to the PSOE and United We Can-, does its homework, is socially committed, has a modernization task that does not avoid, and reaches out to all the parliamentary forces to carry out budgets that are good in their initial design, that we are open to improving them, and that we finally hope will be approved”.
