After the suspension of the meeting scheduled for November 6 due to the critical situation in Valencia, the Lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will finally constitute next Wednesday, November 27, the new permanent bilateral cooperation commission and whose objective is to complete the 1979 Statute before the end of 2025. “The first meeting of the bilateral body will be held in Moncloa at 5 p.m. to advance the agenda. cooperation between the two governments and the transfer of outstanding powers from the Statute of Gernika,” the Basque presidency reported on Saturday. This is the third meeting between the two leaders since Pradales’ inauguration last June.
The bilateral commission is provided for in the Statute but has never met. There are operating rules established in 1987 with Joaquín Almunia as minister of Felipe González and Juan Ramón Guevara as advisor to José Antonio Ardanza and which indicate, among other points, that the meetings will take place either in Madrid or in Vitoria. They have now been updated, in particular to avoid appeals for unconstitutionality.
The model now imitates for Euskadi the forum created in Catalonia to return to the path of agreements after the process and 155. It turns out that Iñigo Urkullu insisted on this in the last part of his mandate, both publicly and by letter , without always having the desired photo.
Pradales and Sánchez cling to the agreement signed by the PNV for the 2023 inauguration. In this agreement, the PSOE promises to complete all outstanding issues of the Statute in 2025. The nationalists put this list of outstanding issues to 29. In fact, they already want half a dozen transfers in 2024. These are maritime rescue, coastal management, film funds, the situation of Aemet – which now coexists without agreement with Euskalmet – and other issues related to work authorizations for foreigners, private security. or a state center in Barakaldo.
For the following year, the most complex issues would remain, headed by the management of Social Security, which would imply that Euskadi would assume the processing of the budget of 12 billion of the pension system and the ownership of buildings and civil servants of this state agency. . It is something that has never been transferred to an autonomous community, but the Statute itself provides that the legislation and the amounts will continue to be common to all of Spain and that the “single fund” will not be broken . Pradales has also included for some time the transfer of so-called “passive employment policies”, that is, the management of unemployment benefits. Active employment policies – training, orientation and hiring – were agreed with Patxi López under the name Lehendakari and led to the creation of Lanbide replacing the former Inem.
Other controversies are raised by certain assertions on infrastructure made by the PNV and from which the PSE-EE, partner in the Euskadi, has already distanced itself in certain public declarations. Airport and port management is in demand. However, the Constitution specifies that this equipment falls under the exclusive competence of the State if it presents a “general interest”. In fact, the ports have already been transferred, except in the case of the two main ones, Bilbao and Pasaia, where, through agreements, the Basque Government can influence their appointments, a tool that the PNV has historically used. A fact: the president of the port of Bilbao is the former leader of the PNV Ricardo Barkala and these days also the ‘jeltzale’ Antonio Aiz, who had just left his position as general director of the Basque Water Agency ( URA), was appointed as director. . Ports could only be transferred if they lose this “general interest” label and are downgraded, with all that this would imply on an economic level. Regarding airports, in Catalonia there is already a model according to which small airfields and heliports would be managed by a regional body, but El Prat, for example, continues to be part of the Aena network.
Pradales has already stated that after completing the 1979 Statute, he wants to undertake reform to obtain more powers. The national recognition of Euskadi is also underway for Sánchez, but the Basque socialists recently considered it a “real threat” that the PNV could save sovereignist positions. The PSE-EE understands that the right to decide is a “red line”.
