The Government begins the race against time to approve its flag laws

The time of parliamentary game It is long and short at the same time. Little more than a year of legislature can go a long way, because the Government is interested in speeding up and unblocking pending and outstanding initiatives that it can sell to its electorate, or for little, because the processing in the Cortes is sometimes stormy and dilated. And there are little more than two sessions left, from September to December and from February to June, plus the time that is enabled next summer and the plenary sessions that remain at the beginning of the fall of 2023, before the two Chambers dissolve. in October, if there is no advance payment for the elections. Hence, the window of opportunity for the Executive is shrinking, also because when he returns from these holidays the pre-election environment will grow until the first stop, that of the regional and municipal elections in May, and that crucial battle will make the pacts more difficult.

The bipartisan PSOE and United We Can have several symbolic laws pending. Some, very close to the BOE, like the one in democratic memory or the one of ‘only yes is yes’, the bankruptcy or the science. But others are much more stopped due to lack of agreement with the partners, such as the law of living place or the repeal of the ‘gag law‘. A handful are still in a very early stage (such as the trans lawthe abolition of prostitution or creation of taxes on banks and electricity companies) and another package is made up of those that have not yet landed in Congress and for which there is still time to cook, such as that of official secrets, the CNI regulator or that of family diversity. In addition to, of course, the General State Budget for 2023. Negotiations that will now have to be led, by the way, by the new socialist parliamentary spokesman, Patxi López.

The coalition government has already managed to approve 154 laws since the beginning of its journeyin January 2020. It would be 155, in fact, if Congress had not overturned the decree law on municipal remnantsin September 2021. Of these 154 initiatives, most are about royal decree laws approved by Congress: 82 (Number 83, that of the remnants, was repealed). 53.25% of the total, a volume that can be explained by the pandemic and the greater ease of processing for the Executive, since it is a quick procedure and, most of the time, without subsequent amendments by the groups.

Other 48 are ordinary laws (31.17%) and 23, organic laws, of higher rank (14.93%), figures to which a royal legislative decree must be added. The count will soon go up to 157 norms, because there are three decree laws -among them, on 14/2022, energy efficiency—, which will have to be endorsed by their Lordships at the end of August or the beginning of September at the latest. Pedro Sánchez and his team usually highlight the extensive legislative production of the Executive as proof that, despite the parliamentary fragmentation and the difficulty in forging alliances, the coalition is steady and is fulfilling its commitments.

But those that still remain in the backpack have a huge depth for PSOE and United We Can. Like the law of living place. The president and Pablo Iglesias have already agreed to legislate the price of rents for their first Budgets together. It was October 2020. Then it would start a long tug of war between the two partners that prevented the project from seeing the light. The political agreement was reached for the following State accounts, in October 2021. The text still had to go down to the fine print, and finally the Council of Ministers was able to send it to Congress on February 1. A month later passed the amendments of totality but that’s where it all stopped. Due to the lack of agreement with the investiture partners, who fear an invasion of jurisdiction.

Very close to the BOE

The lack of consensus with the groups that usually support the Executive also explains the jam that suffers the repeal of the ‘law jaw‘ (either reform of the citizen security law), another of the flagship commitments of the Executive. PSOE and United We Can came to agree on the amendments, and even approached postures with partners about how to sanction resistance to policing, but one of the stumbling blocks remains the type of material riot gear that officers can wear. Socialists trust give a definitive boost to the two standards from September.

In fact, the negotiations ran parallel to those of the democratic memory law, but this was unlocked thanks to the pact with Bildu and PNV (ERC abstained). The text only needs processing in the Senate and, if changes were approved there, it would return to the lower house. Those that the Government calculated in July that would be in the BOE were the laws of ‘only yes is yes’, of science and bankruptcyin which amendments were introduced against the odds that require their return to Congress for final approval.

The Council of Ministers approved last June 27 the bill for the real and effective equality of trans people and for the guarantee of the rights of LGTBI people, but must still be qualified by the Board. The governing body of Congress must also admit for processing the bill proposed by the PSOE and United We Can to create the Temporary and extraordinary taxes on banking and energy companies (promises advanced by the president in the nation’s debate), whose passage through the Chambers will run parallel to that of the 2023 Budgets, to take effect on January 1. In both cases, as will happen with the controversial energy saving decree law, the government will have to attract its partners, given the opposition from the right.

Next year’s public accounts will, in fact, be the big twosome endurance test in its last year of legislature and those that will visualize if the relaxation with ERC, facilitated by the interview with Pere Aragonès and the subsequent dialogue table, last July, is consolidated. The PGE of 2022 prospered thanks to the support of 11 formations: PSOE, UP, ERC, PNV, Bildu, PDECat, Más País-Equo, Compromís, Partido Regionalista de Cantabria, Nueva Canarias and Teruel Exists. The added difficulty for the 2023 accounts is that, as Sánchez promised before NATO, they will contain an increase in military spending that United We Can strongly oppose.

The new law of the CNI is under development

But another combination can make it see the light abolition of prostitution, clear commitment of the socialists that generates friction with their allies in the Executive. The Congress approved the consideration of the proposal with the vote of PSOE, PP and United We Can, but with the rejection of the commons.

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The new classified information law, which will replace the official secrets law of 1968, was approved in first reading by the Council of Ministers on August 1, but it provoked the immediate opposition of the purples and the criticism of the usual partners, which which makes anticipate changes before the law reaches the lower house. The new regulation that will strengthen the guarantees of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) is still being prepared by Defense. And the bill on family diversity and support for familiesthe work of a ministry of United We Can, Social Rights and Agenda 2030, is engaged to return from vacationa year after the Executive studied the text in the first round.

These are, however, only the twosome fetish rulesbut the Government’s roadmap is its 2022 Regulatory Annual Plan (PAN) and compliance with the milestones and objectives agreed with the European Union for the disbursement of funds linked to the recovery plan. And the Executive will have to continue to face the emergency caused by the war in Ukraine, a source, surely, of more royal decree laws, such as the two already validated anti-crisis packages or the energy saving initiatives harshly criticized by the PP, and the contingency that Brussels demands and that must be ready by September.