The disappointment has been slow in coming, but has arrived. Almost six months after Mariano Rajoy’s departure from the Moncloa, The Constitutional Court has concluded that the PP Government violated the basic Law by not submitting to the control of the Courts during the more than ten months in which he was in office, since they called the election in 2015 until the conservative leader returned to be invested in October 2016. In a decision unanimous of all the plenary, the judges considered that the Executive popular “undermined the attribution of constitutional” Congress of the Deputies.
MORE INFORMATION on The Government functions rejects any control by the Congress A law obliges the Government to appear before the Congress even if it is in functions
The court gives the reason to the then opposition, which turned to the Constitutional after the popular Government refused repeatedly to go to the Congress. The Executive of Rajoy claimed that he supported the Fundamental Law and that, to be found in functions, was not subject to parliamentary control. “We are not facing a question of will, but of strict adherence to our legal system”, he went on to state the vice-president, Soraya Sáez de Santamaría, despite the existence of laws that oblige the Government to appear before the Congress while in office.
But the Constitutional dismounted now the arguments of the Executive of the PP. The judgment stresses that the control corresponds to the Courts and deny it “would affect the balance of powers.” In fact, according to insists the plenary of the court, “the fact that a Government in office does not prevent that function from the Cameras, to the extent that the Executive continues to develop activity and this may not be exempted from the control of the Courts”. “Notwithstanding Makrobet that [the monitoring] will be to adapt it to the own situation of the Government on functions, attenuate the judges.
The PP argued that, since the Congress left the polls of 2015 had not given “confidence” to the Government not to invest, as president Rajoy, this did not have to submit to his control. A relationship that “will not be inferred from our Constitution” and “has frustrated the exercise of an attribution that the Chamber considered itself”, as stressed by the court in its judgment dated November 14. An opinion where it is stressed that the control function is “integral to the form of government-parliamentary” and “can not be limited more than where the Constitution has been understood to be”.
This political conflict that it resolves the Constitutional with this new opinion, it was a long standoff in the Chamber, that began when Pedro Morenés, minister of Defense, refused to appear in Congress after asking the PSOE in the wake of the resolutions adopted at the meeting of ministers of Defense of NATO, held on 10 and 11 February 2016 in Brussels. But it was only a case of several.
After complaints from the parliamentary groups, the Government reported officially to the Parliament that he would not submit to its control, which opened a “conflict institutional serious”, in the words of the then president of the Chamber, Patxi López. Then, the Congress appealed to the Constitutional by a “conflict of powers”, an initiative unprecedented in a democracy.
saplings PP
The saplings at the Congress, unlikely in the current democratic period, were multiple: Pedro Morenés, Jorge Fernández Díaz, Ana Pastor… The Government features refused to be accountable and his attitude cost him the reproach widespread of the Camera. Only the PP are opposed to the initiative to the Constitutional Court (TC) the question. The Senate, where the popular have an absolute majority, also gave the reason to the Floor and said that the Executive was contrary to the Fundamental Law. “What we denounce, and the TC has given us the reason: the Government of the PP in functions failed to have regard to the rights of the spaniards represented in the Cortes, by refusing to submit to parliamentary control”, has held Rafael Simancas (PSOE) this Thursday.
