The Government perceives that the State Law for the right to housing that has been approved by the Council of Ministers has a long way to go. Not only the parliamentary procedure, but also due to the judicialization that the autonomous communities governed by the Popular Party have already dropped.
Raquel Sánchez: “With the Housing Law there has been no pressure nor would we have allowed ourselves to be pressured”
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This Tuesday, almost at the same time that the Bill left Moncloa, the advisor to the Presidency and spokesman for the Andalusian Executive, Elías Bendodo, recognized where his movements are going to go. “Rest assured that if it invades regional powers, we will present the corresponding appeal before the Constitutional Court.”
The Community of Madrid also assured in October, when the preliminary draft was approved in the first round in the Council of Ministers, that it would go to the Constitutional Court. In this case, not only because it invaded powers, but because he saw the law as a “direct attack on the families’ piggy banks”, in the words of the Minister for the Environment, Housing and Agriculture, Paloma Martín, who also assured that the regulation is a blow to private property that “scares away investors”.
After these steps, sources from the Ministry of Transport foresee the judicialization. Instead, they point out their “tranquility” because the drafting of the Bill has involved “scrupulous work, in defense of the interests of the autonomous communities and the State.”
Response to the CGPJ
In the case of the Junta de Andalucía, the explanation of why they would go to the Constitutional Court is based on the report published a week ago by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) which, with an expired mandate, has delayed the approval of the Bill by requiring a second report on the text that the coalition government has drawn up. The report has been drafted by members proposed by the PP and PNV. Precisely, the Junta de Andalucía relies on that opinion for being “a setback to this Law” that “should also make the Government of Spain reflect.”
The rule, which bears the signature of the Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, and the head of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda, Ione Belarra, has taken into account the report of the governing body of the judges, but only for formal matters and to reinforce the separation of powers between the State and the autonomous communities.
The text that comes out of Moncloa states, for example, that the “State, in the exercise of its powers to guarantee the equality of Spaniards in the exercise of the right to housing and in application of the principle of cooperation, may collaborate in the design and the financing of the plans that are approved by the autonomous communities and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla in terms of housing, rehabilitation, regeneration and urban renewal”.
In this way, the competences on housing are held by the communities, which are the ones that, among other issues, have to request the declaration of stressed areas. But the Law reflects that “public administrations, their public bodies and related or dependent entities will develop the principles of collaboration, cooperation and coordination in housing matters”.
In addition, as reinforced by the Ministry of Transport, the Draft Law includes a final provision, the sixth, which “details the competency titles that enable state legislation to assume the various contents that make it up, enabling the seventh final provision the development regulation and establishing the eighth final provision the entry into force of the norm”.
In that provision, they highlight, it is clarified that “the Constitution attributes to the State the powers to regulate the basic conditions that guarantee the equality of all Spaniards in the exercise of rights and in the fulfillment of constitutional duties and the bases and coordination of general planning of economic activity, respectively”.
Urgent processing
From now on, the Bill begins its parliamentary process by way of urgency with the intention that it be approved before the end of the year. Sources of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda recall that having a Housing Law is among the Government’s commitments within the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. At the moment, the Executive does not speak of red lines and opens the doors to changes in the text to get it approved in the Cortes.
On the sidelines, the price index that will limit increases in stressed areas, of homes in the hands of large holders (only if they are legal entities) will have to be drawn up in up to 18 months after the approval of the Law. But the Government also insists that this is the maximum term and that it can be ready in less time.
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