Next week the Senate will vote on the Parity Law, which eliminated the veto power, and the following week Congress will make it definitive.
8 Jul. () –
The Government wants to complete the end of the Senate’s irrevocable veto on the budgetary stability and debt objectives, known as the spending ceiling, in the next two weeks, with the idea of smoothing the parliamentary process of the deficit path prepared by the Treasury and thus continuing with the preparation of the General State Budget (PGE) for 2025.
According to parliamentary sources confirmed to Europa Press, the Senate will debate and vote on the Parity Law on 17 July, which is precisely the law in which the PSOE and Sumar included the elimination of the veto and which was approved by Congress on 27 June.
Since the PP has an absolute majority in the Upper House and voted against the law in Congress, among other reasons due to the elimination of that veto power, it is foreseeable that the Senate will reject the text approved in the Lower House.
When this happens, the rejected text must return to Congress and be subject to a new vote, which is expected to take place on July 23 during the same plenary session in which the anti-crisis decree is expected to be ratified and the renewal of the Judiciary approved.
For this final vote on the Parity Law, the Executive needs an absolute majority in the House, at least 176 deputies, and if it achieves this, the text can be published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) and enter into force, including the elimination of the Senate’s veto power.
THE GOVERNMENT WILL APPROVE THE SPENDING CEILING NEXT WEEK
Meanwhile, the Council of Ministers is going to start the journey down the deficit path. According to what the Minister of Economy, Trade and Business, Carlos Cuerpo, announced this Monday at the Europa Press breakfasts, the Council of Ministers will approve next Tuesday, the 16th, the objectives of debt and budgetary stability together with the new macroeconomic framework for Spain.
These objectives, which are voted on, will be accompanied by a report on the spending ceiling, which is not put to a vote. The Government’s intention is that these objectives can be submitted to the Plenary Session of Congress in the last Plenary Session of July, but they would not reach the Senate until the removal of the veto has been completed to prevent the PP from overturning them as it has already done twice this year.
The Government has been seeking for some time to eliminate the power that the Senate has to definitively overturn the objectives of budgetary stability, a power that was introduced under the mandate of Mariano Rajoy in the Law of Budgetary Stability.
THE PP HAS ALREADY VETOED THE OBJECTIVES IN THE SENATE
In the last legislature, an attempt was made to reform this matter and it even survived a comprehensive debate presented by the PP and Vox, but the reform did not go any further and finally fell through when the Cortes were dissolved due to the July elections.
And after the PP had twice rejected the 2024 objectives in the Senate, the Executive returned to the charge and took advantage of the Parity Law to introduce an amendment that reforms the Stability Law and eliminates this irrevocable veto power.
The change promoted by the PSOE and Sumar implies that, if the Senate rejects the stability objectives, they would return to Congress, which would have the final say and could ratify them by simple majority.
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