After a week of hesitation and threats, the PP said yes and will launch “a total offensive” against the government, which will result in the opening of an institutional conflict between the Congress and the Senate on the reform of the law that benefits ETA prisoners. If President Francina Armengol does not rectify and allow the rule to be voted on again in plenary, the People’s Party will take the dispute to the Constitutional Court.
This was stated this Friday by the spokesperson for the popular parties in the Upper House, Alicia García. According to the senator, the group will send a request to the Congressional Council to reconsider its decision not to hold the plenary session. If they persist in their refusal, they will file an appeal before the TC so that it can resolve the “conflict of powers”.
This conflict is uncharted territory for both sides. The President of the Senate, Pedro Rollán, decided this Monday to “veto” the legal reform of Law 7/2014, which would ultimately allow certain ETA detainees to commute their sentence in France and leave prison more early. The problem is that, a priori, Rollán does not have the power to veto this law.
This is where the conflict of attributions lies. The Secretary General of the Senate – a sort of lawyer of the chamber – assures that the project is perfectly legal: that a absolute majority Senators’ opposition to a law can be considered a veto. There are, to say the least, doubts about this interpretation, firstly because it is an unprecedented movement in terms of democracy, and secondly because the popular party did not present amendments or veto during the fixed period.
In all cases, a “veto” by the Senate means that the text returns to the Congress of Deputies. The problem is that after receiving it, President Francina Armengol decided to ignore this “veto” and announced that she would send the law directly to the Official State Gazette (BOE), where it will be published in the next few days.
According to PP sources in the Senate, the first step in the conflict of powers is to send “a request to Francina Armengol” to convene a plenary session and deal with the Senate veto. In other words, a formal request (which will have to be voted on next week) to ask you to rectify.
The President of Congress will then have a month to reflect and, if she does not decide, the PP has announced that it will take the conflict to the Constitutional Court to resolve it.
News in update
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