United We Can has registered a dozen amendments to the proposal to reform the law of ‘only yes is yes’ presented by the PSOE in the face of the trickle of reductions in sentences for sexual offenders since the entry into force of the norm. The confederal group rejects the socialist proposal that reintroduces the evaluation of violence and intimidation so that the existence of these circumstances determines a greater punishment and proposes instead to place these circumstances as an aggravating circumstance.
The proposal that the Socialist Party registered alone in February maintains the current forks (lower than before the ‘only yes is yes’) in the general rate. And it adds in each article a higher gradation (similar to that of the previous legislation) for cases in which there is violence, intimidation or annulment of the will. This point is the one that caused the clash from the beginning with the Ministry of Equality, which understood that introducing violence or intimidation as a factor of differentiation implied de facto going back to the previous Penal Code and modifying the heart of the law to affect, in its opinion, based on consent.
The text that Unidas Podemos now proposes is “in the same line” as those of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and EH Bildu, as confirmed on Monday by the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, and the Government Delegate Against Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell. “We have registered amendments because, despite trying to reach an agreement until the last moment, it is necessary to improve the application of the law but not go back or degrade the consent system,” Rosell said in statements to the media in the halls of Congress .
On the proposal of the socialists, Montero has assured that “it is important that the reform wants to advance” and not “go backwards in the rights of women”, as, according to criticism, the PP wants. The minister has also said that they have been “negotiating for months” with the PSOE but that it “got up and unilaterally presented the reform.” If it goes ahead, Montero considers that “it would be bad news not only for all feminists, but for all women.”
