The paralysis of Congress already affects 145 laws

The president, as ABC reported in early December, has instructed his ministers to approve measures that do not need approval from Congress, where, after his divorce from Junts in October, he has everything to lose. In other words, more regulations and fewer laws. In his end-of-year assessment, Sánchez used the argument that the head of the presidency, Félix Bolaños, repeats so many times, to boast that the Executive won 91 percent of the votes and managed to approve 52 legislative initiatives since the end of 2023. A plea to ward off the specter of a paralysis that appears more and more corporeal. And currently, according to data collected by this newspaper, there are a total of 145 paralyzed regulations in the Lower House.

The PSOE and Sumar government managed to have twenty bills, six legislative proposals and twenty-five royal decrees approved during this 15th legislature, in addition to the reform of article 49 of the Constitution to replace the term “disabled” with “disabled people”. Very mediocre figures if we compare them to other periods, including Sánchez’s previous executive with Unidas Podemos, and which hide the defeats suffered, the initiatives withdrawn “in extremis” to avoid negative headlines and the numerous regulations that accumulate in the Cortes without their processing progressing.

Of these, 56 bills and 89 legislative proposals in Congress remain blocked. In some cases, because the Government does not have the necessary support to achieve them. In others, because these are initiatives that come from the opposition and that the Executive does not want to see the light of day. This is how the “Armengol freezer” was born, as the PP called it, which refers to the trick – used in previous legislatures by parties of different political colors – consisting of systematically extending the deadline for registering amendments so that laws remain de facto trapped.

The first vice president of the government, María Jesús Montero, has repeatedly promised that the Executive will present the budgets to the Cortes, as prescribed by the Magna Carta, even if in the last two months the Congress has twice knocked down the path to stability; stage prior to the processing of state accounts. The break with Puigdemont leads Sánchez to failure in the vast majority of regulations – except those that include previously agreed commitments with the Catalan separatist right – and therefore this entrenched situation has little sign of being resolved.

Furthermore, of the 147 legislative initiatives currently in the Cortes, “a priori” only two will receive the green light: the bill on the social economy, which is in the Senate and which contains measures agreed with the post-convergents, and the law on multi-recidivism Junts, in which the PSOE has joined forces with the entire right – PP, Vox, Junts and PNV – to try to reorient its damaged relations with the party led by the fugitive from Waterloo. (Belgium). Curiously, an initiative with the same objective registered by the Popular Party in Congress is an initiative for which the Council condemns the infinite extension of the registration of amendments. Concretely, the initiative has benefited from more than fifty extensions of the deadline to propose modifications and has remained in this state since September 2024.

The government has 56 bills blocked in Congress, 25 of which come from royal decrees validated by the Lower House. Of the 89 legislative proposals in the same situation, 52 originated in Congress itself (42 from parliamentary groups, seven from autonomous parliaments and three from popular legislative initiatives) and forty in the Senate.

The norms emanating from the Upper House are the most obvious example of legislative blockage, because none of those sent to the institution chaired by Francina Armengol passed the process of registration of amendments. It is for this reason that the Senate raised a conflict of powers against Congress before the Constitutional Court. Those who were treated had the favor of the PSOE or, in the face of social outcry, saw how the socialists registered their own rule in this regard to justify defrosting, as happened with the law to protect patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Among the bills blocked in the Lower House are the one on families, the one that seeks to regulate “lobbies”, the controversial reform of Bolaños to modify access to judicial and tax careers – which put them on a war footing -, the registration of the media, the transfer of instruction into the hands of prosecutors and the controversial cancellation of the debt to the autonomous communities that the CPS had promised to the ERC in exchange for its support for the inauguration of Salvador Illa as “president” of the Generalitat.

But perhaps the most significant are the legal proposals proposed by Congress itself and which remain blocked there, in different states. Some on time to register amendments; others, without the presentation being called, should discuss the rule behind closed doors. Other examples include the Official Secrets Act, the Eternal Promise to the PNV; and the reform of the Law for the Protection of Citizen Security, known by its detractors as a “gag” and which keeps Bildu and the PNV at odds over the authority of the police, but also Podemos because, now that it is no longer in the Council of Ministers, it proposes maximum positions that the PSOE does not assume. Also awaiting their turn are the temporary law on rents from the left, condemned to failure by the conservative opposition, the nationalization of the Sahrawis (Sumar), the illegal occupation (Junts), the neutrality of the CEI (PP)… Same thing with the popular legislative initiative for the regularization of foreigners. No more paralysis.