Esquerra Republicana and the CUP have presented a bill to reform the Parliament's regulations with the aim of curbing "hate speech" in the chamber, limiting the cases of expulsion from the chamber and forcing Vox deputies to sign the Statement of Commitment to Zero Tolerance for Discrimination and Harassment. The proposal, which they intend to be approved by the single reading procedure, also includes incorporating telematic voting and expanding the assumptions to delegate the vote. This bill is in addition to the one that the PSC recently presented, although in this case it is aimed at removing Laura Borràs from the presidency.
ERC and the CUP assure in a statement that the changes are aimed at dealing with hate speech, "also on the rise in Parliament", alluding to Vox. For this reason, trying to give tools to the Bureau to stop them. One of them is to include the pronouncement of "intolerant stories" as a criterion to call for order and expel deputies from the chamber. In addition, the new regulation would force deputies to sign the Zero Tolerance Commitment Declaration against discrimination and harassment (which Vox ignored at the beginning of the legislature) in order to participate in any body of the chamber.
Also with Vox as a backdrop, another of the proposed modifications is that the institutional declarations can be approved by two thirds of the Board of Spokespersons. Until now, unanimity of the presidency and the members of the body is required for this type of statement.
At the same time, the two parties that have registered this parliamentary initiative propose including the Parliament's code of conduct in its regulations to give it a higher rank.
On the other hand, the new wording proposed by the ERC and the CUP extends the delegation of votes to "exceptional situations of special gravity in which, by preventing the development of the parliamentary function, it is considered sufficiently justified." In this way, the Bureau, in charge of accepting or not the delegation of vote, would have more leeway to decide which assumptions are included in this text.
The new regulation could shield the situation of Lluís Puig, Junts deputy and resident in Belgium since October 2017, the delegated vote of which was annulled by the Constitutional Court. Until now, the regulation limits this type of vote to cases of paternity or maternity leave or "hospitalization, serious illness or prolonged disability."
Likewise, the bill includes telematic voting for the same cases as the delegate and adds situations in which deputies or members of the Government are abroad to participate in official acts.
The text as a whole, the two parties have stated in a statement, has been brewing for months and has been "shared" with the rest of the political forces.
