The parliamentary processing of the amnesty law is progressing without the PP being able to do anything about it, although the popular parties are working to make the law's path as difficult as possible. The strategy is to fight every step of the PSOE bill in Congress and the Senate, while trying to transfer the debate to the European institutions. This last movement is the one that resists them the most. After many efforts by the party to Europeanize the debate, its expectations are currently directed primarily at the Venice Commission, a body dependent on the Council of Europe and of an advisory rather than executive nature. A delegation from this commission will travel to Madrid next Thursday and Friday to study the law at the request of the PP-dominated Senate. However, its members will meet with all parties and lawyers of different stripes and prepare a non-binding report.
The population now doubts whether it will be possible to call Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders to the Upper House as planned, since he now has a mediating role between the government and the PP in the renewal of the Parliament, the Judicial Council and because he will soon have to resign from his position, since he ran for the post of Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
Last December, the Venice Commission accepted the request of the Senate, controlled by the absolute majority of the PP, to analyze the amnesty law. This Tuesday, the Executive Committee of the Upper House announced that the delegation will meet between this Thursday and this Friday with members of the parliamentary groups to analyze both the bill and the government's recent movements regarding the level of clemency for the defendants in the trial, such as the Vice President of the Chamber's governing body, the popular Javier Maroto, explained. “Your task is not to investigate whether the amnesty law is constitutional or not,” Maroto warned, but rather whether the “separation of powers” is being respected in Spain.
The Senate Office has sent the Commission both the bill and the amendments translated into English, as well as related statements. Including that of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in which, according to Maroto, he advocates limiting teaching times in order to convince Junts without affecting the amnesty law. “The debate about separation of powers is not just about law. “A lot has happened in the last few months,” he added.
The delegation will meet with representatives of political parties and also with legal “experts”. The first meeting will take place on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. with the President of the Senate, Pedro Rollán, and the new senior lawyer, Sara Mucientes. The PP spokesman in Congress, Miguel Tellado, has accused the executive branch and its partners of preventing the senior lawyer of Congress and author of the report that gave authorization for the processing of the amnesty law from meeting with the Commission, than the congressional table, where The Left has the majority. For his part, the spokesman for the PSOE, Patxi López, has defended that the congressional executive committee has done what has always been done: to have the Venice Commission meet with the sectoral commission, in this case the Justice Commission, and also who met in 2014 with the Interior Ministry met when analyzing the Citizen Protection Act.
The opinion will be available in mid-March, as the Venice Commission has scheduled its plenary session for the 15th of this month. It is quite common for this Community body to allow this type of petition to be processed. And when a bill is assessed, it usually happens quickly, so that the statement is received during the parliamentary process.
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The PP places its expectations in the report of this advisory body, but doubts whether it is now possible to involve the EU Justice Commissioner against the amnesty law. The party had planned to invite Commissioner Reynders to appear in the Senate during the bill's hearing, but various sources in the popular leadership admit that it is no longer so clear that this is possible. The problem is that Reynders is mediating between the government and the PP to reach an agreement to renew the Judicial Council, but also that he is expected to leave office in March to campaign as he is running for the post of Secretary General of the Council. of Europe and may not have time due to the delay in processing the law. Reynders was the largest representative that the PP had expected during the negotiation of the standard in the Senate.
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