Carmena's poisoned legacy: the "privatization" of the legal orientation of the Madrid City Council

The Madrid City Council began the process on Tuesday to outsource the Municipal Legal Guidance Service , a decision adopted by the previous Manuela Carmena Government team despite the opposition of the Bar Association and maintained by the new Consistory. It is a legal advice service offered to the most vulnerable, users of municipal social services. Both the lawyers of the Office Turn and the PSOE, partner of More Madrid last legislature, accuse former mayor Manuela Carmena of "privatizing" a public service . The co-spokesman for More Madrid, Marta Higueras, says that the service will remain free and that it forced the European Union.

The contract that has gone out to tender, for the "general legal orientation for users of the Social Services Centers and for the members of the Municipal Centers of Mayore", has an annual value of 249,000 euros and can be extended up to five years , so the budgeted amount is 1.2 million euros. Since 1989, this service was provided by the Madrid Bar Association (ICAM) through lawyers assigned to the Office Shift. In fact, ICAM filed an appeal before the Administrative Court of Public Procurement of the Community of Madrid, which was dismissed last July.

However, ICAM has resorted to contentious-administrative and has requested the precautionary suspension of the public tender.

The co-spokesman for Más Madrid and former Equity delegate Marta Higueras says that the European Union, for the sake of free participation in the contracting of public services, forced to call a contest. "The City Council could no longer sign a new grant agreement , but was required to tender a service contract," he says in a note. "ICAM could have submitted to the tender and concurred with other possible entities or companies, but declined to do so; it is up to the College to explain the reasons to the professionals who provided the service," adds Higueras.

The former mayor of Equity denies the accusations of the lawyers and the PSOE: "Carmena did not privatize any free service . Carmena did not suspend the Legal Guidance Service. Carmena did not act aggressively" And stresses that the service "will remain public and free for citizenship, only the service provider will change. "

The Municipal Group of the PSOE, a partner of Carmena in the last term, does not think the same, which considers that a service that "provides to the needy" is "privatized" in cases of divorce, eviction or labor problems. The deputy spokeswoman of the PSOE, Mercedes González, attended on Wednesday the protest of lawyers in front of the Family and Social Services Government Area. Gonzalez sees hidden interests in the contest raised by former mayor Manuela Carmena. "I believe that the cost is not important, maybe we find that the recipient of this contest is the important one," he said. And he rejected Higueras' explanations: "It's a privatization," reports Europa Press.

Some 9,000 people from Madrid use this legal guidance service a year and the lawyers of the Association of Lawyers for a Decent Office (Altodo) believe they will receive worse assistance. "Any company does not have the impartiality of the Bar Association and take it out to tender, economic conditions and not the training of lawyers, who in the case of the College pass a sieve and receive training," explains Virginia de la Cruz, vice president of Altodo

So far, the Legal Guidance Service was provided by 37 ICAM lawyers who worked four hours a week in all districts , dedicating about 20 people to each person who needed it.

Despite the controversy, the new Madrid City Council, governed in coalition by PP and Citizens, have maintained the contest. The delegate of Families, Equality and Social Welfare, Pepe Aniorte, of the orange training, has ensured that there will be no substantial change in the service, which will remain public and free for users . "The only fundamental change is that before it was a nominative subsidy and now both the intervention of the City Council and the law of public contracts itself forces a contract to be made," said Aniorte, reports Efe.

Aniorte says that the objective is "to reduce the nominative subsidies and that these services can be transparent and out to whoever can best develop it, with tender and free competition."

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