The PSOE decided early this Thursday to remove the reform of the Land Law from the agenda in the Congress of Deputies just a few minutes before the debate on the amendments to the entirety would begin. The objective of the decision is not to reap the second parliamentary blow in just two days, after on Tuesday the socialists lost the vote on the reform of the Penal Code to prohibit pimping. Although it was a bill promoted by the Government, Sumar stated yesterday that he would reject the rule, thus joining the amendments to all of ERC, Junts and Podemos. The PP also expressed last night its opposition to the text moving forward and leaving the socialists without the necessary support.
Sources from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda reported early in the morning that the reason for the withdrawal is “to guarantee that this rule is not affected by the electoral situation.” European elections are scheduled in just over two weeks. The Government added that this is “a standard demanded by the City Councils, in a letter signed by the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), by the autonomous communities, in the Xacobeo Declaration 21-22, and by the entire sector.” private.
Housing also explained that the reform of the Land Law was a bill that “was processed with the utmost speed to respond to the need to promote housing and expand the public park in Spain.” The same sources criticized the PP’s “lack of sense of State.” “They have prioritized their electoral interests over a demand from city councils and autonomous communities, to favor the development of public housing.”
To avoid losing the vote, the Ministry of Housing had offered the parliamentary groups changes to the regulations. Specifically, given the refusal of Sumar and the investiture bloc, he had turned to the PP. Yesterday the last conversations took place, which did not give results.
Housing included in the bill some modifications that have long been requested by the real estate sector, such as the streamlining of construction permits for developments built on public land. The rule contemplated positive administrative silence. That is, if a promotion requests a license and does not receive a response from the administration in six months, it would be considered granted. The ministry was willing to negotiate extending this measure.
The text that has been withdrawn also included preventing partial annulments and formal appeals to the general urban planning plans from paralyzing the projects in their entirety. At this moment, more than a hundred general urban planning plans have been cancelled. They are those of Madrid, Vigo, Ourense, Gijón, Ibiza, Las Palmas, Santander, Toledo, Zamora, Orense, Vigo and Cartagena, to which must be added those blocked due to minor or correctable defects.
The real estate sector had addressed the PP to show its interest in the processing of the reform of the Land Law moving forward in Parliament and today, after learning that the PSOE was withdrawing the rule, it has expressed its discomfort at the blockage in the that the norm is subsumed. The president of the Association of Developers and Builders of Spain (APCEspaña), Juan Antonio Gómez-Pintado, has stated that “the sector has been demanding for many years, with an urgent need, a land law that gives legal certainty to Spanish urban planning, and which, in addition, concerns one of the main problems we have as a society: the lack of access to housing.” The promoter and construction companies supported the reform. “We understand that the law meets the requirements to provide the legal security that is needed,” Gómez-Pintado assured today.
The debate in the popular parliamentary group existed due to this insistence of the private sector. It was debated whether the Popular Party should abstain at the insistence of companies and employers and present “significant amendments”, or facilitate the second parliamentary defeat of the Government on the same day that the European election campaign begins. Genoa opted for the second option and for not saving a rule considered important in one of the central issues of the legislature, housing.
The association of promoters has indicated that the sector will continue to insist that “we need an agreement for this law to be approved.”
The association of Madrid promoters, Asprima, has expressed itself more harshly. The business organization considers “bad news” to block a reform that “both legally and technically” was “very well drafted.” The employers’ association has asked the PSOE and PP for “high-mindedness and consensus to start a new period of negotiation so that this law is approved in the shortest possible time.”
The Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, assured this morning that, despite the withdrawal of the law, her department has “the feeling of having complied” with the claims of autonomous communities, city councils and the private sector, and has regretted that the “ “boycott attitude” of the PP causes the decline of a reform that provided greater “legal security” to the sector.
Rodríguez has also indicated that the Government was confident that the PP would abstain in the vote scheduled for today and added that he hopes that after the elections on June 9, new talks will begin with the main opposition party.
The Ministry of Housing has given up on approving a new bill again and has decided that after the European ones it will register a bill in Congress to reform the Land Law in conversation with the PP.