The congressional legal services They doubt that the co-official languages can be used effectively in all procedures, at least in the “short term”, warning that “it is very difficult, if not impossible, to implement it on its terms, at least immediately”. The jurists warn that “it will be difficult to meet” the deadlines that govern parliamentary activity if the reform of the Chamber’s Regulations promoted last week by the PSOE is applied in its entirety., Add, CKD, Bildu, PNV and BNG. This Wednesday, the Board, with a majority of PSOE and Sumar, will analyze the lawyers’ report and plans to qualify the initiative, which will go up for debate next week with the objective that it be approved expressly, in direct processing and through a single reading, and become effective in the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on September 26 and 27.
The report, to which Europa Press has had access, does not raise objections to its admission for processing and its approval against the clock, but they warn of the serious difficulties posed by this rulewhich allows the use of co-official languages in all types of parliamentary initiatives, not only affecting oral interventions but to all writings recorded and published in Congresssuch as the Session Diaries or the Official Bulletin of the Cortes.
The norm, according to the lawyers, establishes a “general right to use without limitations and in all areas of parliamentary activity” these languages and allows “the possibility of their exclusive use, outside of Spanish“, something that makes it “inexcusable” to require translation and interpretation mechanisms into the common language. A circumstance that, officials consider, “is very difficult, if not impossible, to apply in its terms, at least immediately or in the short term.” “.
“It affects deadlines”
The reason for this difficulty lies precisely in the fact that the reform “comprehensively affects all procedures, as well as all regulatory deadlines and, therefore, to the entire functioning of the Chamber”, warn the legal services, which have called for “rethink all parliamentary procedures”, to guarantee “the legal certainty” of the legislative process. The necessary procedures that Congress must complete to have a translation system do not seem to facilitate its immediate application either.
The reform includes a transitional provision that delays the use of co-official languages for six months in the presentation of written texts, which in the transition period may be presented in a language other than Spanish but must be accompanied by a translation. In the case of oral interventions, it will be allowed immediately and it is expected that the Board will agree this Wednesday that the deputies themselves will have two options: ‘self-translate’ your interventions or submit a letter with the transcription in Spanish.
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In the six months of transition, it is expected that Congress will gather the necessary means to obtain the necessary means of translation and interpretation, which must be contracted expressly and tendered according to the Public Contracts Law; a procedure that, parliamentary sources warn, could even make it difficult for simultaneous translation to be applied within the established period of six months.
Meanwhile, parliamentary sources warn El Periódico de España, from the Prensa Ibérica group, that there have been technical consultations by the services of the Congress to those of the Senate, where the use of co-official languages in oral interventions is already in force, without it being applied in this case to written records, as will happen in the Lower House. Nor has any appeal been requested at the moment from the governing body of the Upper House.