This Wednesday, Congress validated the royal decree for the renewal of the Spanish Radio Television Council. Last week, the government approved a decree that expands the number of board members so that eleven are elected by Congress and four by the Senate to ensure a majority with their parliamentary partners. In addition, it guarantees that the renewal of these advisors can be done by absolute majority in Congress in cases of blockage in which a two-thirds majority cannot be obtained. The text was adopted with 175 votes and the vote against the BNG. PP, Vox and UPN were absent from the vote.
“This decree serves to unblock the Council. So that we are not what we were for five years with the Judiciary”, defended the Minister of Digital Transformation and Public Service, Óscar López, who defended that the Council that will be elected after the approval of its new operation will be “the most plural in the history of RTVE”. “I am convinced that there will never have been so many groups proposing advisors, even those who will not vote for this decree today,” defended the minister.
This decree includes two main aspects, one concerns the composition of the governing body of the public entity, which will be broader. And the second with the renewal of its members, which corresponds to Parliament. With the changes introduced by the government, the possibility for Congress to approve new advisers by absolute majority is protected in the event of a blockage preventing its approval by two-thirds of the House.
The board of directors of Radio Television Española will now have 15 members. 11 of them will be elected to Congress and 4 to the Senate. “The composition of the Council will respect the principle of balanced presence, it could not be otherwise, between men and women, as established by the law that this government approved for the effective equality of women and men and the law on parity,” he explained. . López when the text came out of the Council of Ministers.
This is surely the most important change introduced by the new decree, because it gives much more weight to the Lower House than it had until now. This allows the entry of advisors into several of the forces that are currently part of the investiture bloc and liquefies the PP quota. The term of office of the new directors will be six years.
At last week’s press conference, he also explained the change in the renewal of the presidency and directors. “To avoid abnormal situations, like those we are currently experiencing, this form of two-thirds election will include a release formula for the election of the Council. If it is not approved by two-thirds in the first vote, it will be approved by an absolute majority when this two-thirds majority is not reached,” he said.
A formula, that of the absolute majority, which had already been used on previous occasions and which with this decree the Government wants to protect to avoid blockade situations like the one currently affecting the entity. Concretely, two previous decrees, one from 2017 and the other from 2022, had introduced changes so that in certain blockade situations and on a temporary basis, the Congress and the Senate could approve the election of members of the Council to the absolute majority. With this new modification, this double tower system is definitively fixed.
The decree received the support of a large part of the inauguration bloc. Sumar, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, PNV and Podemos voted for this new formula. “There is no perfect system,” declared PNV spokesperson Joseba Andoni Agirretxea, announcing his vote in favor of the text, arguing that it improves “plurality”. “We had to unblock an unsustainable solution and give it a path.” It’s definitely not what we would have liked, but it is what it is,” he said.
Sumar, ERC and EH Bildu also said that this new system was insufficient. “It is a first step, but insufficient, that we will try to modify to correct several deficits and allow its unblocking,” declared EH Bildu spokesperson, Mertxe Aizpurua, who clarified that her party has not “requested” or “sought” or “negotiated.” No position to enter public entity. “We do not aspire to enter state entities,” he said.
The PP and Vox rejected the text, although they chose not to participate in the plenary session. The decision was taken after the Council of Spokespersons agreed by majority to suspend the government monitoring session, out of respect for the victims of the storm which claimed more than 50 lives in the southeast of the Spain, but at the same time decided to maintain the control session. debate to validate this royal decree. The right wanted parliamentary activity to be completely suspended. In protest, they left the chamber and absented themselves from the vote, even though their presence would not have changed the result. The two Compromís deputies were also absent from the vote, so that the majority of the government remained at 175 seats and not 177 as initially planned.
