Even if parliamentary activity has accelerated somewhat in recent weeks, the difficulties encountered by the government in achieving a stable majority are visible. In recent months, the PSOE and Sumar have suffered significant defeats in Congress, but the progressive coalition is also having difficulty moving forward on a handful of legislative initiatives that it treated urgently and which have nevertheless been awaiting amendment since weeks. month.
The list of initiatives taken by Congress during the amendment period is telling. There are 13 bills that the Government has asked to be processed under the emergency procedure and which have remained blocked since the start of their parliamentary journey. The Council approves the extension of amendment deadlines each week so that laws do not fall automatically. And some of these texts have remained immobile since March.
Emergency procedure is a prerogative that allows Congressional regulations to reduce deadlines to half of what is stipulated. It is regulated by articles 93 and 94 of this text: “Without prejudice to the provisions of article 91 of this regulation, the durations will have a duration equal to half of those fixed on an ordinary basis.
The technique is common. The government during the last legislature took advantage of this procedure in almost half of the laws it submitted to the Lower House, although this did not prevent many of them from remaining in parliamentary limbo for even years, like the Start-Up Act or the so-called Rhodes Act.
In this legislature, the Government is having difficulty implementing its bills. So far, four texts have been definitively approved. The law on parity, the law on artistic education, another for the creation of an independent accident investigation authority and finally the law on criminal records which has caused a political imbroglio in recent weeks. A few weeks ago, the PP raised a question of competence before the Constitutional Court in this regard.
Meanwhile, some bills have been awaiting progress since March. For example, family law and the text that regulates customer service or the law creating a copyright office. These are also initiatives that the government approved during the last legislature but which were declined with the dissolution of the Cortes after the early elections. Until recently, this list also included some recovered from the previous period which began to be debated in committee, such as sustainable mobility.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced last month, during an appearance before the Lower House, that he would soon approve a new family law. “We will approve a new family law which will expand the rights of single-parent families, large families, families with migrants or with a disabled member,” he said.
However, he was referring to the same text which has been in Congress since March 18. Since then, there have been up to 24 extensions of the amendment deadline due to repeated complaints from Sumar. The text that came out of the Council of Ministers at the beginning of the year recovered the initiative that the Ministry of Social Rights of Ione Belarra had approved during the last legislature and then the emergency mechanism was activated. More than a year and a half later, with a change of government, the text is still waiting for its processing to be activated.
This law explains some of the reasons that push the progressive majority around the table to retain many initiatives: the lack of consensus to move them forward. Sometimes disagreements arise even within the government, even if the law has the approval of the Council of Ministers.
In this case, Sumar recognized that the text came from the Government with some deficits that he had promised to resolve in the parliamentary process. The idea of Pablo Bustinduy’s ministry is to modify its own project to include 20-week birth permits and remuneration for at least four of the eight weeks of parental leave already in force.
This negotiation is linked to that of the General State Budgets. Sumar has included the improvement of these permits in his proposals for the public accounts for 2025 which the government is trying to bring out in multi-party negotiations, with Junts as the main obstacle. So it is likely that if the accounts are unblocked, this law will finally do so as well. But it all depends on whether the PSOE is open to including remuneration for permits or if those of Yolanda Díaz give in on a point that they consider essential.
Something similar is happening with the Sustainable Mobility Law, which also declined in the last legislature and which the Ministry of Transport, now led by Óscar Puente, recovered at the beginning of the year. Congress agreed to deal with it on March 4, and until recently it remained in the amendment period.
During the full debate, which the government narrowly managed to save, several parliamentary partners expressed their objections to the text as it currently stands, among them Sumar, who criticized the fact that the draft does not include questions such as the obligation of neutrality. climate in the sector before 2050. The law has already seen a large part of its content rejected by Unidas Podemos during the last legislature.
And this is the case for many others, such as the law on the universality of the national health system, since mid-June in a period of modification; the law of civil liability in the circulation of motor vehicles; the law establishing a special tax on multinationals, which came into force at the end of June; or since September, the law prohibiting expulsions of vulnerable groups, a decree that the government was committed to transforming into law and which has been pending since September; a law on greenhouse gases and another on cinema and audiovisual culture, entered on September 10, or the law on public service, entered at the end of this month.
Parliamentary sources emphasize in any case that this situation is not new. During the last legislature, many laws were dealt with urgently but remained in limbo for months or even years until they fell or were unblocked. Unlike the Senate, Congressional regulations do not set a maximum limit on the amendment period for emergency-processed laws.
The usual technique is that many bills are processed according to this procedure as an almost automatic mechanism and that they remain dormant in amendments until there is a political agreement that allows their activation in the competent committees .
That’s what happened recently with the ALS Act, which had been dormant in Congress for years and was finally approved this month when all groups reached an agreement to unblock it.
