The Popular Party strongly defended in Congress the approval of the law which provided for the commutation of sentences served abroad and which it now says it rejects because it affects ETA prisoners. It was during the plenary session of September 17 and the popular deputy responsible for speaking during the debate, José Manuel Velasco Retamosa, went so far as to criticize the government for not having approved the text earlier, which undermines the current thesis of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party. party that tries to defend that it did not know what it was supporting. The next day, September 18, the standard was unanimously approved by the Lower House, also with the votes of the PP and Vox.
The draft organic law which modifies Organic Law 7/2014, of November 12, on the exchange of information on criminal records and the review of criminal judicial decisions in the European Union, for its adaptation to the regulations of the European Union on the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS). ), was the one which included the Sumar amendment which integrated the validation of sentences served abroad.
As shown by the intervention of the PP deputy responsible for defending his group’s position during the debate, Feijóo’s party was aware of each of the amendments and corrections introduced into the text during the parliamentary process, even if now the Party leaders accused the government of “deception.”
“It is a simple transposition of a directive which, before reaching the Chamber, was the subject of more technical observations than amendments, which gives an idea of the type of text which we are talking,” Velasco Retamosa began on September 17. “It is a directive which – as has already been said – should have been transposed two years ago, that is to say it arrives two years late when it was a question of ‘a relatively simple thing, and the only thing that it does, despite what he has just said, spokesperson for the PSOE, is to show us once again that the government of Mr. Sánchez is more busy oppose the judges and the media only to activate norms and maintain legislative normality in this Chamber, unless the seat of one of them is at stake. members of the Government, as is is produced with the amnesty law,” he added.
Three-paragraph explanation of the amendment
His entire speech was focused on criticizing the government, but not like now for, according to the PP, “benefiting” the ETA prisoners, but for not having previously approved the rule that was under debate and which also concerned these detainees. Velasco Retamosa also criticized the fact that the Executive applied the norm in the form of decree-law and, therefore, by emergency means. But in no case did he initiate a debate on its content, which the PP fully supported. “What a waste when your spokesperson has to come here today to present a bill that is barely three pages long and which, as I told you, had few amendments and many technical contributions,” he added.
The legal reform unanimously supported by Congress allows prisoners convicted in the EU and later in Spain to add the two sentences to reach the maximum amount a person can stay in prison, according to Spanish law. This is a modification resulting from a European directive which had already been addressed under the government of Mariano Rajoy but which Spain has not completely transposed.
Sumar’s amendment removed the additional provision that the PP had included at the time to limit the effect of the reform and limit it to people convicted after August 15, 2010, which left out some of the most terrorists bloodthirsty ETA. The text is nine pages long and devotes three paragraphs of its preamble to explaining the deletion of the said provision. Therefore, the initiative has at no time “hidden” the reform, as those of Feijóo say.
Although it supported this reform in Congress and did not present any amendments during the opening period in the Senate, that same Tuesday the PP used its absolute majority in the Senate to delay the vote of the initiative in the Upper House, until October. 14. However, the most popular ones will not be able to stop the text.
Feijóo: “The PSOE will be the only one responsible”
No amendment having been presented to the text, it will remain in force even if the Upper House rejects it. The Spanish legislative model places the Senate as the second reading chamber and only takes into account what it approves if it modifies the text that comes to it from Congress. If there is no change, the decision of Congress still prevails.
However, despite the words of its own deputy, the PP accused the government of forging a deception, of distorting the legislative process and even of introducing amendments unrelated to the reason for the law. “The PSOE will be the only one responsible for the story,” Feijóo himself said on Tuesday, who avoided taking any responsibility for what happened.
