The failure of the water summit that took place on March 31 at the Palau de la Generalitat is still going strong. The objective of that meeting between the parliamentary groups and the Government was to agree on the measures that the Government’s decree law should contain to deal with the exceptional situation due to drought in Catalonia, but the impossibility of reaching an agreement on the sanctioning regime for the councils that breached certain restrictions has meant that the battle between the Catalan Executive and the opposition has been transferred to the Parliament.
The PSC-Units group, contrary to the sanctions against the town councils, has decided to present an alternative text to the Government’s decree law, which was validated by the Parliament but processed as a bill so that the groups could make contributions. The contributions could not be agreed upon at the summit, so the Socialists have decided to take the initiative by presenting an amendment to the entirety with an alternative text that aims to correct that of the Catalan Executive.
Also Junts intends to do the same. As announced by the president of the parliamentary group Albert Batet, the post-convergents will present an alternative text if the Government does not present this Tuesday, at the Consell Executiu, a reform of the decree that it approved in February. And the Catalan Executive has not done so.
The arguments of both groups to correct the action of the Cabinet of Pere Aragonès in terms of drought are the same: the breach of the promise of the president and the minister of the branch, Teresa Jordà , to modify the decree against the drought in the line of what they pointed out in parliamentary headquarters, that is, of the fines to the city councils.
The PSC and Junts grupos initiative is autonomous. They have not yet coordinated to make a common front against the Government on the matter of drought, but the positions of socialists and post-convergents on this issue are similar. Both claim to repeal or postpone the sanctioning regime and self-demand to the Government in terms of planning and investment to counteract the drought. In addition, the correlation of forces plays in their favor and, as on so many other occasions since Junts left the Government, both groups are willing to assert their votes to condition and correct the policy of the ERC Executive.
The alternative text of the PSC does not include sanctions or specific limits for the consumption of water per capita, as the Government did – it set 230 liters per inhabitant per day. But it does establish that the Catalan Water Agency be the one to assume, on an extraordinary basis, the costs derived from the “adaptation, improvement or installation of control elements and management of available water resources” throughout Catalonia, as well as “the installations, works and urgent and priority actions†that are also detailed in the text.
Many of these actions may be financed from European funds or from the Generalitat’s budgets, but they may be expedited through an emergency procedure, as occurred during the pandemic with public administration contracts for the acquisition of medical supplies. This procedure will make it possible to launch a series of works and actions for better water control, to improve the supply, the water infrastructure and the emergency supply.
In addition, the socialist alternative text includes measures such as the suspension of water intakes from surface and underground resources for uses other than supplying the population; the possibility of recovering disused wells for said supply; gives powers to the Agència Catalana de l’Aigua to modify the conditions of use of the public hydraulic domain; allows city councils to split the payment of the connection fee to the Ter – Llobregat supply network, and establishes the obligation to repair damages due to non-compliance with the regulations for the use of water resources.
The spokesperson for the PSC-Units has once again criticized the action of the Government and the ACA in terms of drought. She has accused the Catalan Executive of having broken her word when she promised to modify the decree law. “Trust has been broken, that is why we have put a solution on the tableâ€, she has justified. And regarding the ACA, she has once again pointed out that the public entity has “200 stopped shares” and that “350 million euros have been left unexecuted.”
For its part, the formation of Jordi Turull has justified its ultimatum to the Government: “If it continues with its inaction and does not present a new decree on drought in Parliament as promised, we will not hesitate to take the initiative from Parliament” . From the El Prat desalination plant, Batet has lamented that the Catalan Executive “does not lead, does not seek consensus and, furthermore, fails to comply.” For this reason, Junts plans to present a proposal that “guarantees the necessary investments to help the municipalities and to carry out key projects such as the El Prat desalination plant.”
