Pending the final agreement between the PSOE and Junts to carry out an amnesty for those accused of the process, the parliamentary calendar would allow the law to be approved before the end of the current session period, just before Christmas. If the parties manage to close a text next week, they will have another eight weeks to approve the amnesty law. With express processing, it is possible to have it in the week of December 18 to 22. We explain it in seven steps:
To have an amnesty law ready within two months, we must get down to business, without waiting for Pedro Sánchez's inauguration to take place. In that case, the processing must be initiated by the parties. A government in office cannot present bills in Congress and decree laws are also very limited. Therefore, the amnesty must begin its journey as a bill, at the initiative of a deputy with the signature of 14 others or of a parliamentary group with the signature of his spokesperson.
The PSOE could register the initiative alone, but it could also present the text together with Sumar, or repeat the bloc that the Board voted on August 17 and which has 178 deputies. In any case, the approval of the law will require the support of all these groups. As it is an amnesty law, it must be done through an organic law, which implies a reinforced legislative procedure, with the support of an absolute majority of Congress in its final vote (minimum of 176 seats out of 350).
The registration of the organic law proposal should be done next week, between October 30 and November 3.
If the initiative has been registered in Congress before Saturday, November 4, the Board may give approval for its processing at the meeting of the following Tuesday, in this case it would be November 7. In the Table there is a majority of PSOE and Sumar, so the text will not have problems being admitted for processing. (The previous amnesty law did not surpass that first step in 2021). The criteria of legal services is not mandatory. The decision is always political.
To speed up the processing, the PSOE and Sumar can assert their absolute majority at the Board to impose the emergency procedure, which shortens the deadlines by half, not only in Congress but also in the Senate, where it is key for the PSOE. control time, since the PP has an absolute majority in the Board and in the chamber and could delay the processing.
Along with the emergency route, and exceptionally, there is the possibility of processing a law in a single reading, which means that the norm can skip the procedure of being debated in the Justice Commission - at this moment they are not even constituted the legislative commissions – and go directly to the plenary session of Congress.
From the Congress Board, the text is sent to the Moncloa to give its approval to the debate. You have a period of 30 days to do so. He could exercise his right to veto for budgetary reasons, if it means an increase in expenses or a decrease in income. If after 30 days, the Government has not made a statement, it will be understood that there is no problem and the text may be included in the agenda of the first available plenary session.
However, for the reform of the crime of sedition, in the last legislature, the Government gave the green light in just 24 hours. In the case of the amnesty, the Executive can register its written agreement for processing that same week.
This body, made up of all the parliamentary groups (PP, PSOE, Vox, Sumar, ERC, Junts, Bildu, PNV and Mixed Group), will have to give approval to the plenary session in which the law is expected to be debated and approved, and set the agenda for the same. Here, again, the majorities rule. The calendar of plenary sessions is not set for the months of November and December, but the Board may include a plenary session when it decides. The Board of Spokespersons could meet that same week, or at the latest one week later, from November 13 to 17, and set the plenary session for the following week.
The single reading procedure condenses the processing of the law in the plenary session. The consideration and debate of the entirety could be done together if it is an urgent procedure. That is, in the week of November 20 to 24, once the amendments have been debated and voted on, and the final text approved in Congress, it could be sent to the Senate, a process that takes between 24 and 48 hours. But the PSOE could still win a week if the meeting of the Board of Spokespersons (point 4) is held the same week as that of the Board.
The PP has an absolute majority in the Senate chamber and in the Board of this chamber, so it could slow down the process. If it were an ordinary legislative procedure, the processing could take several weeks from receipt of the text. However, as it is an initiative declared urgent, the Senate has 20 calendar days to process it and, where appropriate, incorporate amendments (additions, deletions or specific modifications of the processed text) or vetoes (which imply a rejection of the entire text).
If there were no amendments or veto, the text would be definitively approved as law. It would then be transferred to the Government for the purposes of its sanction and promulgation by the King and publication in the Official State Gazette. But this is unlikely to happen.
If amendments or vetoes have been approved during the Senate process, they will be sent to Congress and submitted to debate and voting in the plenary session. Amendments require a simple majority of votes (more in favor than against) to reject them, and vetoes require an absolute majority (half plus one). In the Senate process, the PP will exhaust the 20 days, which puts us in the last business week before the Christmas holidays, December 18 to 22, for Congress to give final approval to the law.
If any delay occurs throughout this procedure, the processing would be interrupted in the fourth week of December, from the 18th to the 22nd, and would not be resumed until February, since the month of January is a non-business month in parliamentary terms.
