After the Chamber of Deputies imposed a brake on the adjustment the previous day (rejecting the veto to the disability law), the Senate crowned a black week for Javier Milei With an unprecedented institutional coup. With a broad and transversal majority, the opposition rejected five presidential decrees that dissolved and disregarded the State’s key organisms, and at the same time approved two laws that reinforce university financing and declare the pediatric emergency with more resources for hospitals.
The votes revealed the parliamentary loneliness of the ruling party, which barely gathered circumstantial support, and marked a historical fact: No president since democratic recovery had seen so many rejected decreesnor had he faced the definitive cancellation of a DNU by the two cameras. The result leaves Milei with a negative record in just two years of management.
How parliamentary rejection works
The decrees of necessity and urgency (DNU) have an effect immediately after publication in the Official Gazette. Then they must be sent to the Permanent Bicameral Commission of Congress, which raises an opinion to both cameras. The key is that A DNU remains in force if at least one camera approves or leaves it without treating. It only loses validity if both deputies and senators expressly vote for rejection.
In practice, this rule made Congress a more reactive actor than a decision. In fact, From 1983 to 2024 no president had seen a decree repealed by the intervention of both chambers. Everything changed with Milei.
Although no decree had been definitively repealed, there were partial rejections. In 2010, the Chamber of Deputies voted against two decrees of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner related to the use of Central Bank reservations for debt payment. But like The Senate never treated themThey continued in force.
Later, In 2020, the Senate – with a Kirchnerist majority – rejected three decrees of Mauricio Macri signed between 2015 and 2018. One of them transferred the telephone listeners to the Supreme Court; Another reorganized the Directorate of Judicial Assistance in Complex Crimes; and the last granted compensation to gas distributors after devaluation. Again, since they were not accompanied by deputies, the decrees did not fall. That is: even Milei, all the presidents had raffled the legislative objections. And no Peronist president had received the effective rejection of both cameras.
Milei and the breakdown of the rule
The current president not only lost in deputies and senators with his DNU 656/2024, which extended funds reserved for intelligence, but also saw other delegated decrees linked to the Disolution of roads, the reorganization of INTA and the INTI, the autonomy removal of the National Genetic Data Bank and the restructuring of cultural institutes.
The opposition wove transverse majorities that included radicals, Peronists, provincial blocks and even dissident libertarians. With this, Milei accumulated more decrees rejected in less than a year than all its predecessors in four decades. In the words of a constitutionalist consulted: “It is the first time that Congress not only controls, but also limits the Executive Power in the use of Dnus.”
Since the return to democracy, the resource of the DNU has been frequent and controversial. Raúl Alfonsín used it rarely, although one of the most remembered was that of the Austral Plan. The “Big Bang” arrived with Carlos Menem, who signed 195 decrees.
Néstor Kirchner was the president who dictated the most: 236 in total. Eduardo Duhalde, in his brief internship, signed 154, which places him as one of the leaders with the greatest average per management day. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was the one who least used the tool: 78 in eight years of government.
Mauricio Macri added 71; Fernando de la Rúa, 59; Alberto Fernández, 177 —Concentrated in the Pandemia of 2020—; and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, 6 in just one week of mandate. Milei, with 62 decrees in less than a year and a half of management, is already positioned in the fourth place on a average of issuance, surpassed only by Rodríguez Saá, Duhalde and Néstor Kirchner.
A tool under suspicion
Article 99 subsection 3 of the Constitution, amended in 1994, authorizes the President to issue DNUS “when exceptional circumstances made it impossible to follow the ordinary process of laws.” They are veiled in criminal, tax, electoral and political parties. However, the practice significantly expanded its scope.
Jurists agree that the Mega DNU 70/2023 of Milei, with more than 600 pages, meant a qualitative leap when modifying or repealing hundreds of block standards. “It was an attempt to replace Congress,” said constitutionalist Andrés Gil Domínguez. Others, such as Daniel Sabsay, warned that “rejection marks an unprecedented limit to Argentine hyper -presidentialism.”
Behind the voting a significant political fact is hidden: No Peronist president had suffered the defeat of a decree in both chambers. The previous rejections (Cristina in deputies, Macri in the Senate) had remained in symbolic gestures. The Milei case, on the other hand, inaugurates a new stage in which Congress not only pronounced, but effectively slows executive decisions. In institutional terms, it is a rebalancing of powers. In political terms, a sign of weakness: the libertarian ruling lacks its own quorum and failed to build stable majorities to sustain its measures.
In four decades of democracy, the DNU became a key instrument of all presidents, used for both real emergencies and to legislate outside the Congress. The difference is that Milei, in record time, already holds a negative record: he is the first president to which Congress rejects and repeals decrees definitively. The data summarizes a paradox: the president who has made the flag of the “fight against caste” ran into a congress that, for the first time since 1983, managed to twist the arm to the most powerful tool of Argentine hyper -presidentialism.
By rn
