This Monday, the plenary session of Senate rejected for absolute majority the bill that benefits more than 40 ETA prisonerswho will see their prison sentence reduced.
The vote was interpreted as a “veto” by the president of the Upper House, the popular party Pedro Rollansupported by a report from Senate lawyers. The Congressional Office, however, announced on Tuesday that it would not respect this interpretation and would send “the text to the BOE for publication” in the coming days.
The decision of the board of directors of the Lower House is also supported by “the recommendations of the legal services of the Chamber”, according to official sources from the Presidency of the Congress.
All this leads to a conflict of attributions between the two chambers that make up the Cortes Generales in the Spanish constitutional system. At the moment the Senate has not confirmed that it will act in this direction, but parliamentary sources indicate that this should be the way to resolve the dispute.
The institutional shock would end with a writing before the Constitutional Court. The President of Congress, the socialist Francine Armengolis preparing to approve the law.
For his part, Voice has already taken action and responded to Armengol’s decision with a letter to the Congressional Council demanding a new vote on the law. If Armengol ignores this letter, Vox deputies will file a protection appeal with the Constitutional Court for violation of their rights.
The last time a power conflict arose was with the amnesty laweven if the PP backed down at the last moment and the conflict between the organs did not reach the Constitutional Court. The reason? Génova considered it unnecessary “to give an advantage to Pedro Sánchez thanks to “Candido Conde-Pumpido”which would likely resolve the case in favor of the coalition government.
“A veto”
According to the report of the General Secretariat of the Senate, in the possession of EL ESPAÑOL, the complete vote by rejecting “globally and head-on by an absolute majority”, the legal text “must be understood as a veto”beyond not having met the “formal requirement” of having been approved within the formal deadlines “as a veto amendment”.
The deadline for this procedure was September 30. And to that date, neither partial amendments nor veto proposals had been presented to the Upper House for the draft reform of organic law 7/2014.
The text should be limited to being a transposition of a European directive on the exchange of criminal information between EU member states. But during the process of presenting it to Congress, Sumar introduced a group of amendments that changed the real purpose of the law.in June this year.
According to the version put forward by the PP, the opposition deputies did not perceive the importance of these amendmentsalthough they were explicit in the repeal of the only additional provision introduced by the government of Mariano Rajoy in 2014 to prevent people convicted before August 15, 2010 from benefiting from the accumulation of sentences handed down in other EU countries.
The objective of this provision of this PP government was prevent members of ETA who have served sentences in France from benefiting from this calculation to reduce their stay in prison in Spain, once handed over by the French authorities and sentenced in Spain.
Senate lawyers understand that “there is no precedent” for this case. And this, therefore, it is appropriate to interpret what happened in the light of the Constitution, which “prevails over regulatory texts”. Thus, despite the formalism introduced in the Senate Regulations, “the fundamental right of representation must prevail” on formal regulation, if it “acts against the greater good protected by the Constitution.”
For this reason, the presidency referred the bill to Congress and not to the government. The idea was to force the Lower House to hold a new debate and vote on the law. Thus, according to PP sources in the Senate, “we could visualize if the PSOE is with the victims or with the executioners of ETA, as it seems they have already demonstratedonce again, for their hooded pacts with Bildu.”
The conflict before the TC
Indeed, the legal services of Congress, which prepared their report the same Monday afternoon, after the text was sent from the Senate to Congress, have already ruled that “regulated procedures must be respected.” This is why, The Table of the Lower House, with a socialist majority, “understands Organic Law 7/2014 as validated” on the exchange of information on criminal records and the review of criminal court decisions in the European Union, which will be sent to the BOE for publication.
According to the Constitutional Courtwhen one of the constitutional bodies considers that another of them adopts decisions by assuming the powers conferred on it by the Constitution or organic laws, “it will inform the invading body within the month following the decision which was brought to your attention from which the irregular takeover of power is deduced and will ask you to revoke it”.
This is what the Senate should do now, if it wants to effectively protect the fundamental right to political representation, as the lawyers for the Upper House claim in their report. The document emphasizes that “the plenary session of the Chamber is not an organ of the Chamber, but the Chamber itself” and that, therefore, the lack of formal respect for the veto proposal “cannot prevail over the will expressed by the entire Chamber, and by an absolute majority“, as was the case.
The Constitutional Court also warns that “if the body to which the request is addressed affirms that it is acting in the exercise of its powers or, within one month from receipt of the notification, does not rectify in the meaning requested, the an organization which considers that its powers are unduly assumed may raise the conflict before the Constitutional Courtspecifying the precepts that it considers violated and formulating the allegations that it considers appropriate.
In this case, the Constitutional Court would transfer the document from the Chamber that favored the conflict to the other required body. Senate sources assure that this is what the Congressional Council should do now, instead of sending the law to the BOE, to understand that It must be the Table of the Upper House, with a popular majority, which raises the conflict of powers. “to promote this constitutional process.”
If this ends up happening, the PP would achieve its goal initial objectivewhich must delay the entry into force of the reform which benefits ETA detainees.
However, you will have to wait for the decision of the TC which will resolve the conflict, which will determine “to which body the controversial constitutional powers correspond”, to know if you are able to achieve the main objective. That is to say, to prevent the entry into force of the reform or, at least, “to make it known that it is the government of Pedro Sánchez which wants to release the members of ETA from prison”.
