The Government of the Generalitat expects to approve in June the hydrological plan for the internal Catalan basins for the period 2022-2027. This was the commitment publicly acquired yesterday by the Department of Climate Action headed by Teresa Jordà . Due to the delay in the delivery of this planning, the European Commission has filed a complaint against the Generalitat, as reported by La Vanguardia yesterday.
Catalonia should have reviewed, adopted and informed Brussels of the water management plans before the end of 2022, as established by the European Water Directive. This instruction stipulates that communities update every six years all their data in relation to water management. The purpose? Achieving the full ecological recovery of rivers, lakes and underground reserves, as well as organizing their water services. This planning now takes on special importance, at a time of severe drought alert like the current one. There are two other communities that do not comply with the directive: Andalusia and the Canary Islands.
The Ministry of Climate Action confirmed yesterday that the plan “is currently in the final processing phase”. Since March, the same sources pointed out, it has been in the hands of an advisory legal commission, then it will go through a technical council and finally the Government will vote on it. Once it is approved by the Catalan Executive, it will be forwarded to the central government and then to the European Commission, “an almost automatic process because in Madrid there is no need to do any additional procedures”.
According to Teresa Jordà ‘s department, the central government has been informed and is “perfectly aware of the delay in the plan”, a delay which they attribute to the former management of the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), who believe that they should have to have started the process eight months earlier.
The warning from the EC that now arrives through the Central Government in the form of the opening of a file could end with an infringement if the legal requirement is not attended to as soon as possible. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, already told this newspaper that an eventual sanction “would be sent from the State, logically, to the non-compliant territories”.
The debate on the current drought situation, which affects a good part of the State, especially Catalonia and Andalusia, will reach the Senate this week. The PP has brought to the plenary vote a motion in which it calls for the urgent convening of the National Drought Committee, as well as establishing a calendar of meetings to monitor water shortage situations in all hydrographic basins. The people propose a contingency plan with extraordinary measures for the basins where the drought situation is most serious. There is the circumstance that the proposal of the group led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo is raised in the midst of a political struggle with the PSOE for the approval on Thursday by PP and Vox in the Andalusian Parliament of a bill to legalize illegal irrigation in Doñana .
