The Congress Board, with the votes of the PSOE and Sumar, yesterday processed the amnesty law proposal registered by the socialist parliamentary group with the endorsement of the lawyers' report and the angry rejection of the PP. Each time, the Board also approved the calendar for the Chamber, which includes the solemn opening of the legislature for November 28 and the start of the regular session period for December 12. This means that, if there is not an extraordinary call by the president of the Chamber, Francina Armengol, on December 12, the plenary session of Congress could vote on taking into consideration the organic law and, also, its urgent processing.
The PP voted against, alleging the alleged unconstitutionality of the initiative and resorted to an ad hominem against the senior lawyer of Congress to contradict his previous report on the norm. The reports of the Chamber's lawyers who inform the Board are mandatory but not binding. The fact is that these lawyers, and consequently the Board, rejected the processing of the amnesty law proposals registered in the last legislature by the independence groups. Under the presidency of Meritxell Batet and with the votes of the right and the PSOE, the Congress Board rejected, two years ago, processing the amnesty proposal registered at that time.
However, the report of the lawyers that gives rise to the current initiative reviews in detail all the accumulated jurisprudential doctrine and establishes a new criterion according to which, without entering into the final constitutionality of the norm – a prior filter that the Constitution expressly prohibits – If there is no “obvious and obvious” unconstitutionality, nothing prevents its processing.
The controversy lies in that definition: “Easy and obvious” refers to an unequivocal violation of rights. In ruling 135 of 2004, cited in the report, it is stated that the mere unconstitutionality of the initiative, because it requires a constitutional reform, cannot disavow the legislature to process a bill: “The fact that such an initiative can only "prosper successfully if the Constitution is first reformed, as the State's lawyer maintains, it does not make the proposal itself (...) an unconstitutional initiative."
A previous ruling of the Constitutional Court, 124 of 1995, already established this express prohibition of an a priori judgment of unconstitutionality: “In the event that the eventually unconstitutional law proposal reaches the definitive form of law and those possible vices of unconstitutionality persist, Only this court, when the subjects entitled to do so demand it, would be responsible for ruling on the constitutionality or otherwise of that future law.”
Hence, the senior lawyer of Congress, in his conclusions, points out that, beyond the formal relevance of a bill, “the only circumstance in which the Board has the obligation to reject the admission for processing is the case in which that, regarding the initiative in question, there has already been a previous ruling by the Constitutional Court.”
The amnesty law is not one of those cases, the Constitutional Court has never openly positioned itself against its relevance and there is no express prohibition in the constitutional text either.
For this reason, the Congress lawyers base the reasons for the report contrary to the initiative of the pro-independence groups on another concept, that of the general pardon: “It has not been based on the possible consideration of the amnesty as an unconstitutional figure, with the Table not having pronounced in this regard, but, instead, we must insist on the fact that the basic initiative involves a general pardon, this being expressly prohibited by the Constitution." In this sense, the report returns to the court's own ruling regarding the 1977 amnesty law.
That is the reason why the legal report that was debated at length yesterday in the Congress Board, without prejudging the constitutionality of the organic law that comes out of the legislature based on the proposal registered by the socialist group, considers that it has not to stop its debate in the plenary or its taking into consideration, since the form it takes is not that of a general pardon and therefore does not contribute to the aforementioned “obvious and obvious unconstitutionality” to which the jurisprudence of the TC alludes.
Thus, Cuca Gamarra, still parliamentary spokesperson for the Popular Party, attributed an alleged lack of forcefulness in this report to the replacement in the general secretariat of the Congress of Deputies and announced that his parliamentary group will interest the Board in reconsidering the decision adopted. yesterday, an initiative that has been supported by the far-right party Vox.
The Board also blessed that the bill be processed urgently, although this decision must also be voted on in the same plenary session in which the taking into consideration of the norm is debated. The urgency reduces by half the deadlines for presenting amendments, both partial and vetoes, and their return to the plenary session for the final vote.
The urgent procedure means that, a priori, the Senate would only have twenty days to report and vote on the bill, but the express reform of the regulations that the absolute majority of the PP has approved in the Upper House gives it two months. for the discussion of the norm, although unconstitutionality appeals are being processed against this regulatory reform with a request for precautionary suspension, so that the Constitutional Court could force the Senate to resolve in twenty days.
