Ricardo Ramirez Calvo He is a constitutional lawyer with extensive experience. He was part of the small table that collaborated for almost two years with Federico Sturzenegger to do the project. But he does not share the decision to remove him through DNU. “The forms in law are essential. If we leave aside the forms and only focus on the substance, the institutional system explodes,” he says.
News: What was your contribution to the project?
Ramirez Calvo: Approximately a year and a half of work was done on the general project. The topics were divided between different teams and Sturzenegger, together with a smaller group that included me, coordinated the task and gathered the conclusions. I collaborated in this coordination, analyzing not only constitutional issues, but also others of my specialty. I am not only a constitutionalist, but I have been practicing the profession for many years and I am dedicated to business consulting. I gave my opinion on the topics in which I have experience. In all cases I also gave my opinion on the constitutional aspects.
Based on that, some suggestions were discarded, although in other cases my opinion was not taken into account. Furthermore, taking into account the text of the decree of necessity and urgency 70/23 and the bill, there are some differences with respect to the original project. That is logical, since I assume that President Milei’s team must have made suggestions and modifications.
In some cases, the opinion of some work teams was different from mine. For example, in my opinion art. 20 of the national Constitution prevents fees for education or health for foreigners, whether they are residents or not. It is the same principle that governs the rural land law, which unconstitutionally discriminates between Argentines and foreigners and whose repeal implies strictly applying that article of the national Constitution.
News: In other words, when they were working on it, they did not imagine that it was going to be sent for approval by DNU. Is that so? What happened?
Ramirez Calvo: The project was prepared for Patricia Bullrich. I am not politically active and I do not belong to Pro or any of the parties that make up Together for Change. I only collaborated on a project that I believed was important to reverse many years of Argentine decline. I did not participate in the preparation of the decree of necessity and urgency or the bill. Political decisions are totally foreign to me. Those who make the decisions on how to implement a policy are, in this case, the president of the Nation and his ministers.
From the constitutional point of view, in my opinion all decrees of necessity and urgency (not just this one) are presumed unconstitutional, since that arises from the first paragraph of art. 99, inc. 3 of the national Constitution. It is not enough that there is an emergency, but it is necessary that it be impossible to follow the normal procedure of formation and sanction of laws. Unfortunately, this has not been the practice in our country, which has normalized the abuse of decrees of necessity and urgency.
Congress never rejected a DNU. Since 1994, more than 800 decrees of necessity and urgency have been issued. Only in the previous government there were more than 170. Almost all of them were unconstitutional, since it was not impossible to follow the procedure for forming and sanctioning the laws and the pandemic is not a constitutional justification.
For example, by decree of necessity and urgency, private deposits were confiscated twice, which was validated by the Supreme Court (with a different integration than the current one) in several rulings, an enormous number of constitutional rights were suspended without declaration of state of place, among others, that of working, that of exercising any legal industry, that of teaching and learning, that of meeting, that of entering, transiting, staying and leaving Argentine territory, etc. It was stated that the Constitution did not apply during the pandemic, because it had not been written for it, or that “in a pandemic there are no rights” (Senator Mayans said). Also, legislative delegation and emergency declarations were abused to violate constitutional rights.
That those who previously abused the decrees of necessity and urgency today appear surprised by the use of that same mechanism is enormously cynical. Decree 70/23 is the child of all that previous disastrous practice. Of course, in my opinion, the fact that it is one of the many decrees of necessity and urgency that have been issued in our country without necessity and urgency does not make it any less unconstitutional. For me it is as unconstitutional as all the previous ones. The difficulty lies with those who previously abused the decrees of necessity and urgency, those who justified them and the judges who admitted them. Now they suddenly discover that there is something called the National Constitution and that they had forgotten in the chest of useless things. They are emergency “sommeliers” and accommodate constitutional arguments for what interests them. In my case, I have always maintained the same position against these types of decrees.
News: What changed from the original project?
Ramirez Calvo: I don’t have the original project at hand and it was so extensive that it would be impossible for me to summarize in a few lines some of the changes that have been made, and it would also require a very detailed analysis that would take a long time. The contact person to ask these things is Federico Sturzenegger. I only responded because Federico mentioned me.
News: Some, like Grabois for example, maintain that lawyers from “big companies” participated in the project, referring to Funes de Rioja and some others. Is that so?
Ramirez Calvo: The disqualifying reference made by Grabois is absurd and demonstrates the statist bias of many people. It is an ad hominem argument and, therefore, authoritarian. He intends to disqualify a work because of its authors and not because of its content, which demonstrates a great poverty of arguments. I am a lawyer for large companies. Does that disqualify me? Why is a lawyer who works for the State (and who, therefore, wants the State to continue regulating everything because that benefits his personal interests) is more authorized than me to make legislative proposals? Lawyers who do not work for the State know all the problems that absurd regulations generate for economic activity. Dr. Grabois’s argument does not stand up to the slightest analysis.
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