Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Second Vice-President and Minister for Labor and Social Economy Yolanda Díaz during the second day of the State of the Union debate on 13th July. EDUARDO PARRA
Betray trust, hide information, or maneuver stealthily. The serious allegations that the partners in the coalition government have been dealing with have weighed on La Moncloa since the beginning of the legislative period, which was two and a half years ago. The attacks between the two partners have intensified during the recently concluded political year, after the blow of the pandemic had stopped and La Moncloa was more or less able to honor the legal promises that came after Pedro Sánchez embraced and Pablo Iglesias . With the former leader of Podemos removed from the executive branch, second vice president Yolanda Díaz has taken on the weight of tensions in the Council of Ministers. The state of constant tension and weak parliamentary arithmetic did not prevent the implementation of 155 legislative initiatives: 71 laws, 83 royal decrees and one royal decree-law. On the near horizon are three more decrees for validation – like the controversial text of Energy Conservation Measures – and the final stages of a dozen laws of particular depth before the end of the year; this is the case with “just yes is yes” and housing.
One of the most recent internal struggles was sparked after the Council of Ministers approved a loan for the Ministry of Defense of up to 1,000 million. Díaz called for an urgent meeting of the Coalition Monitoring Commission, which should be the sixth of the Crisis Cabinet meetings, which are convened whenever tension rises in tone. The armistice was signed without holding the meeting. The Labor Minister and the District President agreed not to harm each other by meeting alone before leaving for vacation. Resource consumption was one of the biggest points of friction between the partners. But not the only one. The general state budget law is one of the regulations that must be discussed and negotiated in the legislative period beginning at the end of August. The public accounts presented by the Ministry of Finance last year received the support of ERC, PNV, Bildu, PDeCAT, Más País, Nueva Canarias, Compromís, Teruel Exists and PRC. But recent disagreements with the government’s parliamentary partners, such as Esquerra, have complicated approval of the government’s proposed legislation in recent months.
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Among other things, the rejection by the Republicans of the labor reform proposed by the government meant that this year 2022 began with one of the craziest chapters that Congress remembers: a decree that, thanks to the mistake of PP deputy Alberto Casero, the Er voted against his party. The months leading up to this surreal episode passed as Yolanda Díaz and First Vice President Nadia Calviño adjusted the law’s provisions amid extreme tension. A negotiation that led to the fifth and last meeting of the coalition support commission in October last year.
The labor reform is one of 155 legislative initiatives that have been finally adopted so far in the legislative period. Comparing these data with those of the same period (two and a half years) of the 10th legislature, in which Mariano Rajoy governed with an absolute majority and therefore with total freedom to implement the people’s proposals, the government coalition party has, according to the Ministry of Presidency and Relations with courts Passed 19 more laws than Rajoy.
The department, headed by Félix Bolaños, has negotiating work that has intensified in recent months due to disagreements with the ERC, which was considered one of its pillars. None of the parliamentary partners gave the executive a carte blanche after the investiture, so many laws had to be passed to the utmost. Not only by the coalition itself, but also in subsequent parliamentary procedures.
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The procedures are shortened and can be circumvented if the legislative initiatives are developed by decree. Such is the case with labor reform and the recent energy saving package to harmonize European Union claims, agreed at an Extraordinary Council of Ministers in Brussels at the end of July. The government has already started talks for Congress to validate the energy standard soon. It will be “one of the first measures” that the chamber will deal with when the parliamentary course is resumed. The negotiations will probably not be easy. “You can always do something better, but it’s not true that there hasn’t been dialogue,” Jaume Asens replied to the allegations of a lack of communication with the Autonomous Communities. The president of the United We Can group also announced in an interview with RNE this Thursday that the negotiating machinery had already started. The PNV, one of the executive’s partners, has already expressed its doubts about the application of the decree.
Meanwhile, the main opposition party persists in the frontal attack on the executive branch for energy saving measures. The deputy secretary of organization of the PP, Miguel Tellado, again unleashed artillery from San Sebastian yesterday. Exactly, alluding to the coalition’s legislative production. “Sánchez’s government has become accustomed to conditions, with more than 120 decrees in the legislature, because the dialogue even between the parties that make up the executive branch is pretty bad.” But 83 rather than 120 decrees have been validated since the inauguration of this government, plus another three decrees approved by the Council of Ministers that will have to be ratified in Congress in less than a month – of the 86, 15 correspond to 2022 –. Like other previous executives, the coalition has made excessive use of this legislative tool: more than 50% of the regulations adopted were issued by decree.
Article 86 of the Constitution states that “in the event of exceptional and urgent need, the Government may issue provisional legislation in the form of Decree-Laws”, to be confirmed within a maximum period of 30 days from the approval of the Council of Ministers. And since Sánchez arrived in Moncloa, abnormal situations have been piling up one after the other: the pandemic, the eruption of the La Palma volcano and the war in Ukraine. About half of the decrees can be traced back to these extraordinary events. Coming back to the comparison with the first phase of the Rajoy – and taking into account the first two and a half years of the 10th legislature of the PP – of the 136 legislative initiatives adopted, 56 were passed by decree, 41.17%. However, when an executive branch rules with an absolute majority, the use of the decree is less crucial to the final outcome, since approval of each bill is guaranteed in Congress. And to a lesser extent in a simple majority government with more stable parliamentary support.
In addition to the three decrees awaiting validation, three relevant laws are expected to be finally sanctioned by the end of August and during the month of September – with the resumption of political course: the Science Law, the Bankruptcy Law and the “Yes, it is Yes”. Legislation that already has a foot in the BOE after passing the Senate and only requires their return to Congress. The ‘yes is yes’ rule is another example of tensions in the Council of Ministers, and this finally came about when the PSOE withdrew the amendment on prostitution that threatened its endorsement.
Another ten bills are pending between September and the end of the year, which are well advanced in parliamentary processing and will be in the port before January 2023. These include the law of democratic memory, official secrets, trans law and housing. In addition to general budgets.
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