21.01.2014 - 13:56
The Spanish Congress has registered the bill sent by the Parliament of Catalonia which asks that the Catalan Government be given the power to hold a referendum. The congressional session will theoretically debate the measure in September, though the discussion could be moved up to June if another parliament relinquishes the right to defend the proposals that it has registered, as has happened in the past with the Valencian Parliament. To speed up things, CiU, ERC and ICV plan to file an identical proposal this week.
The governmental organ of the lower Spanish chamber, where the PP has an absolute majority, made no mention of the content of the bill and only agreed to ask the Parliament to remit the necessary documentation.
The Vice president of the Congress and Member of Parliament for CiU, Jordi Jané, explained to the media that the measure had been admitted ‘without any type of objections from anyone’ and ‘completely normally’ and now must be included in the official congressional session’s agenda.
The resolution could forseeably not be debated until September, because the chamber only votes on this kind of proposals on the first Tuesday of each month, at a rate of one per month. Before the proposal from the Catalan Parliament, the Congress has five other proposals in line from other Autonomous communities, and proposals are always reviewed in the order in which they are presented. Nevertheless, it could happen that some autonomous community parliament, as has happened previously with the Valencian Parliament, could decide not to defend one of the proposals that it has already presented. If that were the case, the text from the Catalan Parliament could be debated in congressional session as early as June.
The Catalan parliamentary groups have chosen to pursue a quicker resolution and this week plan to jointly present the same bill. They can take advantage of the strength of each of the three groups in order to force an earlier debate in Congress. CiU will be the first to have this opportunity. It has the right to present a bill in March.
But the text will have to overcome some formal obstacles before coming up for debate. According to parliamentary sources, the rules establish that, once registered, the table has to approve a bill’s submission and communicate its contents to the Spanish Government. Since in January there is not enough working time in Congress, this approval will take place in February. Once the text is approved, Mariano Rajoy’s government will be able to will have 30 days to oppose the filing—and can veto the bill outright—if it would mean an increase in outlay or a decrease in budgetary income.
