EH Bildu announced on Thursday an agreement with the government on the repeal of the gag law, one of the commitments made by Pedro Sánchez’s team with its partners at the start of the inauguration. The independence party will finalize this agreement throughout the morning.
Despite the promises of the PSOE, the law on citizen security promoted by the government of Mariano Rajoy to restrict the right to demonstrate has been in force for longer under the parliamentary majority which promised to repeal it than under the executive which promoted.
Congress was on the verge of dismantling this text last year, after a tortuous negotiation between parliamentary partners and the government. These conversations clashed on four points: the use of rubber bullets – which this rule does not regulate –, harsh reactions, fines for disobedience and lack of respect for authority. ERC and EH Bildu demanded the elimination of these four points, the most “harmful”, according to their arguments, and the PSOE rejected these demands which it considered as “apologies”.
The use of rubber bullets was not regulated in the 2015 law and the permissiveness of hot returns was included in an additional provision of this text, but the government asked to take this into account in a future legislative reform.
In this legislature, Sumar registered a proposal that saved all the agreements reached in previous years and that again left aside these four controversial points, in order to reopen a discussion within Congress with the rest of the groups. This proposal, defended the parliamentary group, dismantled 98% of the gag law.
The law change was included in the Executive’s regeneration plan, but without any specificity. In the chapter “Establishment of greater guarantees of media independence”, the “reform of Organic Law 4/2015, of March 30, on the protection of citizen security, is established in its article 36, section 23 , on the qualification of the sanction for the use of images of state security forces and organizations.
