In the first attempt of the new legislature, the majority of the congressional table once again rejected the legislative initiative to regulate the functions of the crown. The PSOE and the PP combined their votes to reject a Basque Nationalist Party bill that sought to limit the king’s immunity from his institutional acts.
A roundtable meeting of the Congress, the body responsible for deciding whether to consider the groups’ proposals for their further consideration in the plenary session, discussed a battery of PNV proposals on Tuesday, among which was reform of the official law. Secrets, a proposal to change the operation of the National Intelligence Center or to change other public justice.
All of them received the approval of the majority of the Congress, except one, which sought to limit the immunity of the king. The proposal received four negative votes from the People’s Party and also three from the PSOE, while Sumar supported the proposal to go to the plenary session. Socialist sources explain that in order to regulate the protection of the king, the constitution must be changed.
The proposal of the PNV proposed to limit the inviolability of the figure of the head of state to his institutional acts, because from this formation they consider that “the interpretation of inviolability which assumes that the king is above the structural values of the constitution and the laws, except that the will of the legislator was not to make inviolability absolute” .
For this, they proposed to change Article 55 bis of the Judiciary Law and to insert the second paragraph: “They will also hear civil and criminal actions directed against the King or Queen during the exercise of their office in actions that are not subject to approval.” and which are not related to the institutional functions of the head of state”.
This is a similar initiative presented by the jeltzale formation a year ago and which was also rejected by the majority of the table, which then consisted of PSOE, PP, Vox and Unidas Podemos (which voted in favor of it. processing). At the time, the Socialists cited a recent report by congressional lawyers who believed the proposal could be unconstitutional.
In a report dated June 2022, the lawyers considered that the Basque nationalists’ proposal “invaded the existing constitutional reserve for essential elements of the Crown as defined in Title II of the Constitution, seeking a regulatory development that was contrary to the legal regime. The inviolability of the head of state, in the sense in which it is configured in paragraph 3 of Article 56 of the Constitution, it is not possible to regulate this issue by the proposal of the law.
The PNV presented the initiative at the time with the idea that there could not be a repeat of procedural situations like that of Juan Carlos I, whose cases regarding his alleged illicit enrichment and tax fraud were brought by the Spanish courts. in the constitution. The Basque group wanted to insist on this issue at the beginning of the new legislature, but once again met with opposition from the majority of the council.
Source: El Diario
