The government has once again crossed its own red lines to please its parliamentary partners. Just three months ago, the Interior Ministry opposed the removal of rubber bullets used by riot police, arguing that their absence would lead to an increase in insecurity. Now the discourse has completely changed.
EH Bildu announced this Thursday in the Lower House that it had reached an agreement with the Executive (PSOE and Sumar) to reform the Citizen Security Law, known as Gag law. To this end, the government has lifted the four vetoes that prevented the reform from progressing during the last legislature.
Although there were several points of friction then, the biggest one had to do with the rubber bullets. PSOE negotiators, charged by Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, refused to ban them and instead proposed carrying out a study to “modernize” riot control equipment, which was not sufficient to Bildu and ERC.
The last to verbalize the refusal was the Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Perezand this on June 19. Within the Congressional Interior Committee, several deputies questioned him on this subject and he maintained that the removal of this deterrent element would endanger members of the security forces.
Pérez stressed that “throwing our agents” directly without rubber bullets “presents a greater risk, not only for the people in front (referring to the protesters), but also for the agents themselves.” The Secretary of State also asked Bildu who “forget certain maximalisms”.
Marlaska himself also rejected partners’ demands to eliminate rubber bullets in September 2022. During an institutional visit, when journalists asked him about this, he said that the police should use “all deterrents with necessity and proportionality.
However, Pedro Sánchez’s need to reestablish bridges between the government and the investiture partners led the executive to change its position to advance the reform of the Citizen Security Law, promised by the PSOE since 2015.
In the agreement presented on Thursday, the government and Bildu undertake to “end the use of rubber bullets”, to replace them with “less harmful means”. This step will be progressive, even if the final timetable for its elimination has not yet been established.
Other criteria changes
During the last legislature, the Government did not want to address, in the reform of the system Gag lawcalls hot returns. The Executive then argued that this objective could only be achieved through reform of the immigration law, apart from the law on citizens’ security.
Rafael Pérez also spoke about it last June before the Congressional Interior Commission: “They know that our position is that this must be regulated in their specific regulations and in no case in a law on citizen security.” But now the two questions are no longer distinct.
The government and Bildu agreed to give themselves a deadline of six months to modify the immigration law, “establishing access and evaluation of requests for international protection before the possible expulsion procedure”, as asked Arnaldo Otegi’s party.
Agreement was also reached on the concept of resistance or disobedience to authority. Until now, the PSOE only agreed to reduce the severity of sanctions in the event of providing false or inaccurate data during identification. Bildu and the rest of the partners, on the other hand, demanded that disobediences be minor offenses in all cases.
It is this last result that Bildu achieved. “The offense ranges from serious to minor and it is established that the disobedience must be manifest, clear and objective. It will only be punished when it complies with a legal order,” the agreement specifies.
The pact also addresses the lack of respect for officers. The PSOE had previously requested that “humiliating acts or derogatory or offensive expressions” of agents be punished, which for Bildu and ERC was not very concrete: they asked that only insults and insults be punished and that, in addition, the fine is ineffective when there are excuses for the expressions.
What was finally agreed is that insults or insults will be minor offenses and that, for there to be an offense, they must be relevant expressions, without disagreement with a legitimate mandate being enough. . In addition, the sanction is canceled in the event of an apology. That is to say, Bildu’s vision also prevailed here.
They celebrate the “cessions”
Although the announcement of the agreement was made by Bildu, other partners of Sánchez such as ERC joined the text. “We are delighted that the PSOE has given in to our demands regarding the reform of the system Gag law“, say sources from the independence party. “After this change in the criteria of the PSOE, we have the parliamentary procedure which will now begin”, they add.
Parties like the PNV will also join. Even if the success of the reform is not assured. Podemos and Junts, both essential to the Executive to obtain its parliamentary accounts, demonstrated their rejection of what became known this Thursday.
Whether it is achieved or not, the truth is that this agreement is a move by Pedro Sánchez to please several investiture partners.
A few days ago, he also changed his mind by declassifying the documents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), which will become dependent on the Presidency of the Government (and not the Ministry of Defense, as is currently the case ). The Government thus responds to the demands of the PNV, the ERC and the Junts. Pedro Sánchez thus seeks to re-oil the legislative body.
