The government’s self-proclaimed Action Plan for Democracy Pedro Sanchez plagiarized the proposal made by the PP in January 2023 to force the annual celebration of the debate on the state of the nation in the Cortes. This is what the battery of measures of democratic regeneration presented by the leader of the opposition and leader of the PP affirms, Alberto Nuñez Feijooin 2023 in the city of Cadizcradle of constitutionalism.
Concretely, according to the plan managed by the Government, within the framework of “axis 3”, aiming to “strengthening the transparency of the legislative power of the electoral system”, the first “line of action” seems to be to establish the “obligation to perform the State of the Nation Debate and the election campaign debates. This is the “p“Promotion of transparency instruments of the political system and electoral processes,” says the Executive.
Along with the government’s intention to control media critical of the project, it also stresses that “the legislative branch and the electoral system require certain reforms that guarantee greater transparencyas well as greater publicity and control in the exercise of legislative work and in the development of electoral campaigns.
For Moncloa, “the new political, economic and social context requires adapting the laws, regulations and codes of conduct of the institutions to new needs such as electoral debates, the publication of surveys, the work of interest groups and the work of deputies.
Theoretically, the State of the Nation debate should take place every year, but this It’s an unwritten rulewhich has been violated on different occasions. Therefore, a regulation is necessary to force its appeal, as proposed by Feijóo’s PP in January 2023 as part of its Institutional Quality Plan. The main opposition party introduced the following point in its regeneration document, now copied by Sánchez: “A specific regulation will be approved on the annual frequency of the State of the Nation Debate, which “It will no longer be a discretionary initiative of the government.”.
According to the website of the Congress of Deputies, the debate on the state of the nation was introduced in Spain in 1983, under the mandate of the socialist government. Felipe Gonzalez. Since then, it has been held 25 times almost uninterruptedly until 2015, with the exception only of election years. The nation’s last debate It was held in July 2022, after seven years without being convened. (the previous one dated from 2015 with the popular Mariano Rajoy in Moncloa), mainly due to the coincidence with the elections.
There is no forecast of the Government to maintain this debate for the rest of 2024. Last year neither There were some because the general elections of 23J were held. In 2021, by decision of the Government, it did not take place either. As in 2018, the year of the motion of censure that brought Sánchez to power. It is precisely this arbitrariness of the government in its call that we intend to correct.
Sánchez has only called one of these debates as president, and participated in two (the one in 2015 in opposition and the one in 2022 as a tenant of Moncloa). Felipe Gonzalez He participated in 11 sessions (10 as president of the government and one in 1997 as leader of the opposition). For his part, Jose Maria Aznar He has intervened in ten (six as president and four as leader of the first opposition party). He follows José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (six as president of the government and three as leader of the opposition) nine times tied with Mariano Rajoy (three as president of the government and six as leader of the parliamentary opposition).
The website of the Congress of Deputies underlines that this initiative “is conceived as a general policy debate which lack of express regulatory provision and is structured around the figure of government communications referred to in articles 196 and 197 of the Regulations of the Congress of Deputies.
Government initiative
In this way, the State of the Nation Debate is based on the initiative of the Government, which sends the corresponding communication to the Chamber. In this context, the Sánchez Executive now considers it “appropriate to give stability to this transparency mechanism and government responsibilityestablishing a regulatory obligation to hold the State of the Nation Debate every year,” the socialists say.
Since the 1997 edition, a maximum quota of proposals to be presented by each parliamentary group. And the debate on the proposals, in which the groups intervene in descending order of numerical importance, generally takes place the same week as the debate on the state of the nation, although in 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2013 it was decided to postpone this debate to the following week, the Chamber indicates.
Once the debate is over, the proposals presented are recorded and then voted on, so that those approved by the majority of the House become a parliamentary mandate to the government of the time. In the case of the last debate, that of 2022, the Congress gave the green light to 41 resolutions out of the 138 proposals presented by the parliamentary groups.
