“The Government adds and continues,” warned Minister Félix Bolaños when presenting the Executive’s legislative agenda for 2024 approved by the Council of Ministers.
The advancement of the Catalan elections to next May 12, in the midst of an intense electoral calendar – with the Basque elections on April 21 and the European elections on June 9 – forced Pedro Sánchez to renounce the general budgets of the State for this year , not being able to have the essential support of ERC and Junts, already focused on the 12-M contest. The electoral calendar thus left the current legislature in suspense, waiting for the polls to settle the new balance of forces on the political scene.
But, with the intention of resuming the initiative in the midst of the all-out war opened with the PP due to the corruption scandals, and to try to overcome an image of legislative paralysis and parliamentary weakness, as the support to add majorities is not guaranteed. Yesterday, the Council of Ministers approved its regulatory action plan for 2024, which includes almost 50 new laws.
“It is a realistic and ambitious plan,” said Bolaños. And in the Moncloa they trust that this cataract of almost fifty bills for the current year, “should have a very important consensus” in the Cortes.
The profile of this regulatory agenda, with laws of a social nature, to modernize public administration and improve employment conditions, expand rights or support youth, would thus seek to avoid internal dissent in the coalition between the PSOE and Sumar. And also realign the parliamentary majority of Sánchez’s investiture, which includes left-wing formations, such as Esquerra, EH Bildu, Podemos or the BNG, and others with a more conservative tendency, such as Junts, the PNV or the Canary Coalition.
“The Government renews its commitment to a progressive legislative agenda,” Bolaños highlighted when outlining the up to 198 legislative initiatives incorporated in this new regulatory plan, for approval in this same 2024. These are, as he listed, six organic laws, 43 laws ordinary and 149 royal decrees.
The minister highlighted among them the planned laws on Industry, Cinema, Youth, Transformation of Public Administration, against Trafficking and Exploitation of Human Beings or the reform of the Criminal Procedure Law (Lecrim).
Bolaños, however, avoided saying whether this latest legal reform will include a reduction in the deadlines for judicial investigation, as the Government offered to Junts during the negotiation to unblock the processing of the Amnesty law in Congress.
To finalize this rule, he alleged, the Executive wants to wait to know the mandatory report requested, three years ago, from the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). Bolaños regretted that the governing body of the judges rushed to issue reports on the controversial Amnesty law, which were not mandatory, and instead took three years to delay establishing a position on the Lecrim reform.
Yesterday the Council of Ministers also approved the challenge before the Constitutional Court (TC) of the agreement of the Parliamentary Committee to process a bill, arising from a popular legislative initiative, to declare the independence of Catalonia. In its appeal, the Government requested the suspension of the processing of this initiative, which will imply its immediate suspension.
Bolaños justified this decision to combat the “isolationism” of Catalonia. “This resource protects the Constitution and the institutions of Catalonia,” he assured. And he warned that the Statute and Catalan self-government are regulated by norms that this independence initiative, in his opinion, would “tear down.” The Government and the PSOE, he stressed, “in no case are they committed to the independence and isolation of Catalonia with respect to Spain and the rest of Europe.”
Nor do they accept a self-determination referendum, which Bolaños included among the “formulas of the past that led to collective failures and generated tension, conflict and confrontation.” No matter how much Junts and ERC demand it before 12-M.
