The PSOE, Junts per Catalunya and Esquerra Republicana have reached an agreement to give the definitive green light to the Amnesty law in the Congress of Deputies and will introduce some modifications to the wording so that the independence movement has all the guarantees, as reported by the three formations in a joint statement this Wednesday. The changes will be introduced through a joint transactional amendment that will capture the spirit of the modifications that arrived alive at the plenary session on January 30. The text will be announced this Thursday.
“After days of joint work, and taking into account the guidelines of constitutional, European and international law, as well as the preliminary report of the Venice Commission, the parliamentary groups of the PSOE, ERC and Junts have reached an agreement, through a unique transaction based on the different amendments that were kept alive, to reinforce the Amnesty law, which is a law that covers all people linked to the process and that is fully in accordance with the Constitution, European law and jurisprudence and the better European and international standards”, points out the common text that the three parties have sent.
The pact, which arrives when time was running out and will be staged at the meeting of the Justice commission of the Congress of Deputies that will be held tomorrow, Thursday, will allow the central government to move forward, change the screen and open the negotiation of the budgets and shore up thus the legislature at a very critical moment for the Executive of Pedro Sánchez, stalked by the Koldo case and the offensive of the Popular Party. With the focus on the scandal of the collection of commissions by Koldo García, former advisor to the former Minister of Transport and former secretary of organization of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, for the sale of masks to various administrations during the pandemic, the socialists and the pro-independence parties intensified negotiations last week, the same week in which the Supreme Court decided to open a criminal case against the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont for terrorism in the investigation into the Democratic Tsunami protests of October 2019. That is the context of the rapprochement of the positions between PSOE and JxCat, which in the plenary session on January 30 overturned the rule in the Lower House considering that it did not offer guarantees. ERC, for its part, had voted in favor and considered that the wording was already good enough to approve it and has asked its former partner for “responsibility” all this time.
After several weeks of discretion, with the Galician elections in the middle, last week the public statements of some and others began to point to the entente and Puigdemont himself, on Saturday, hinted at an event of the Consell de la República held in the south of France that penal oblivion will be approved when speaking of a “new stage” and “leaving behind exile” and the “slab of repression.” Already that day it was taken for granted that the entente was secure. In turn, the Socialists have spoken in similar terms these days by pointing out that the agreement was “imminent”, as the minister spokesperson Pilar Alegría said this Tuesday after the meeting of the Council of Ministers or as the President of the Government has detailed to the journalists who accompany him on his trip to Brazil and Chile.
In fact, the deadline to reach an agreement in the Justice Commission is this Thursday, March 7, and the extraordinary mechanisms that allowed extending that period in the event of a blockade were not activated. Last Saturday, at the latest, we had to request an extension of the processing deadlines and it was not done. The day before, on Friday, the Venice Commission issued the draft of the report that it has to present in mid-March on penal oblivion, after its visit to Spain. In that document, both Junts and the PSOE saw a boost for their position.
Be that as it may, the agreement allows us to leave behind one of the issues that most wears down Pedro Sánchez’s Executive after the approval of the bill was frustrated at the end of January by the opposition of Junts, which wanted to introduce into the text more guarantees so that criminal oblivion would not exclude anyone, especially those investigated for terrorism and other crimes such as high treason. This is the case of the members of the Committees for the Defense of the Republic (CDR) of Operation Judas or Puigdemont and Marta Rovira. This same week, at the National Court, Judge Manuel García-Castellón has taken another step in that direction by accepting the request of two police officers injured in the Tsunami Democràtic protests to investigate whether Russian spies traveled to Barcelona between 2014 and 2019. .
At first, JxCat welcomed the initial text that the PSOE registered in November, agreed upon during the negotiations for the investiture, and assured that it was not necessary to introduce any amendments. However, the party changed its mind due to the offensive of certain officials such as the aforementioned judge García-Castellón, with the instruction of Tsunami Democràtic, or Judge Joaquín Aguirre, in court number 1 of Barcelona, ??who is directing the investigation of the alleged Russian process plot. The socialists, in turn, rejected changes in the text that went to the plenary session on January 30, but in the end they have opened themselves to introducing technical modifications, to give more guarantees to the sovereignists.
Be that as it may, if Congress passes the bill in mid-March, it will go to the Senate, where the PP has an absolute majority and where it will try to delay the time as much as possible. The text will lie fallow for about two months before returning to the Lower House, which will have the final say and the power to lift any amendment or veto. In this way, the rule would be definitively approved in mid-May or early June, for its immediate entry into force. Another issue is the application of what the law provides by the judges, who retain the right to refer queries to higher authorities. A process that could delay its application to depending on the defendants.
There are two debates and two independent negotiations but, with the unblocking of the Amnesty law, the Government in turn wants to accelerate the approval and processing of the new general budgets of the State for the current year, key to being able to provide political stability and economic to a legislature that for now cannot shake off the label of uncertain.
Pedro Sánchez has warned that the will of the Government and the parliamentary majority that supported his investiture is to provide stability to the mandate, with a roadmap that includes the approval of new public accounts for 2024.
Although, given the possibility that the amnesty could not be unblocked, the Government has already clung to the fact that the 2023 budgets continue to be extended in this year, the president now wants to go ahead with new accounts, without having to wait for the 2025. To this end, the vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, “is already struggling” in the negotiation with the groups, including Junts, according to the PSOE.
In this sense, the spokesman for Junts in the Senate, Josep Lluís Cleríes, today summoned Montero herself to the negotiation and budget agreement. “If you want a legislature, we want it because we believe that we are at a key moment,” said Cleríes. And the Government, needless to say, does want a legislature
