With the fair dose of suspense that is characterizing the legislature, but without reaching the threat of heart attack of other votes, the Government has managed to carry out the energy saving decree this Thursday thanks to the solid support of its investiture partners who, in return, they have scratched from the Executive the commitment to process it as a bill. Thus opening up the possibility of including amendments to the text.
In total there have been 187 votes in favor, thanks to the last-minute support of the ERC, and one abstention, which have doubled the 161 noes of the right-wing bloc and which allows the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to save a package of measures that It has marked both the summer break and the early start of the political course with the recently completed extraordinary plenary session. The last of the legislature, something that United We Can understand forces the coalition government to enter “a new phase.”
The person in charge of defending it has been the Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, who has not waited for the vote to celebrate the victory, aware that the support was guaranteed. And she has done so by highlighting that, in the first two weeks of application of the energy saving decree, savings of around 8-9% have already been registered.
The inclusion in the same decree of saving measures -such as turning off shop windows or limiting air conditioning and heating- together with transport aid, scholarships or the end of obligations related to covid-19 in airports has provoked criticism from the PNV, ERC, EH Bildu, Más País, PDeCAT and BNG -whose deputy has finally abstained- who have agreed on the need to design structural and long-term measures to stop jumping from decree to decree .
“Today they present a decree to which it is difficult to say no. Worse, do not wait until the last minute or tempt fate because one day it will not come out,” deputy Idoia Sagastizabal warned from the PNV.
However, the PSOE has minimized the criticism, to which it will have to respond in the following weeks, to publicize the measures as “unequivocal proof of the Government’s determination to protect families and industry” against “negationism of the opposition”.
The position of the right was led by the PP who, from the outset, had made its total rejection clear by branding the Executive as intransigent and urging it to “abandon ideology and sectarianism to think and worry about the Spanish”.
The spokeswoman for Ciudadanos, Carmen Martínez, also spoke of impositions, who accused the Executive of “demanding unconditional support” from others, when it does things in a “sectarian” way.
The novelty, if anything, has been the challenge of Vox announcing the decision to present an appeal before the Constitutional Court, thus joining the position of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and amplifying an internal debate in the PP that its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has tried to dodge in recent weeks.
