The Constitutional Court warns that the state of alarm should not have suspended the "political control" of Parliament to the Government

• Direct Coronavirus crisis

• Justice The TC believes that the bolt to Congress in the first confinement violated the rights of the deputies

• Politics Vox affirms that the state of alarm was the "greatest violation of rights in history" and the PP defends that it has already warned

The Constitutional Court maintains in the ruling where it found violation of fundamental rights of parliamentarians due to the closure of the Congress of Deputies during the first state of alarm by Covid-19 that "this parliamentary institution has the constitutional duty to exclusively assume the demand of responsibility to the Government for its political management in those exceptional periods of time, with more intensity and force than in the ordinary time of operation of the constitutional system ".

The resolution, a presentation by magistrate

, emphasizes that "the declaration of the state of alarm, like that of any of the other two states of exception and of siege, cannot in any case interrupt the functioning of any of the constitutional powers of the State. and, in a particular way, the Congress of Deputies ".

On October 5, the guarantee court upheld the appeal filed by the Vox deputies against two decisions of the Board of Congress, then chaired by the socialist Meritxell Batet, where it paralyzed the deadlines for the processing of parliamentary initiatives. A resolution, of March 19, 2020, closed the activity of the Lower House, with the votes against the PP and Vox; and another, of April 21, rejected the allegations against the first decision.

The High Court, which appreciates the violation of the fundamental right to political participation, maintains that "the functioning of any of the constitutional powers of the State and, consequently, of the Cortes Generales, cannot in any case be interrupted. , paralyzed or suspended, not even temporarily, one of the essential functions of the Legislative Power, such as the political control of government actions. "

"Political responsibility"

The magistrates emphasize that the Congress of Deputies, insofar as it is the only Chamber constitutionally empowered to enforce the requirement of political responsibility for the actions of the Government, in relation to the initiatives and measures that it may adopt and apply during that period of in force, in no case may it cease to perform that function, "not even on the initiative of any of its internal organs, since the Congress of Deputies has exclusive responsibility for the constitutional design of the rule of law, which obliges it to be permanently attentive to the vicissitudes involved in the application of the exceptional legal regime that involves the validity and application of any of those declared states ".

Therefore, the sentence reads, "in the declaration of the state of alarm, the exercise of the right of political participation of the deputies must be, in any case, guaranteed and, in a special way, the function of controlling and, where appropriate, demand from the Government the political responsibility that may arise ".

For their part, the attorney for the Cortes Generales and the Public Prosecutor's Office argued that the agreement to suspend the calculation of the deadlines was intended to preserve the life and health of the deputies and staff of the Chamber, taking into account that, in addition , some of the recurring ones had been infected by Covid-19.

However, the Constitutional Court rejects this reasoning because "although this objective of preserving the life and health of the parliamentarians themselves and the staff of Congress is in accordance with the Constitution, the decision to suspend the calculation of the deadlines for the processing of all class of parliamentary initiatives, without any exception, and without having established a time frame of duration (...), it is contrary to one of the most characterized functions of parliamentary work, such as that of political control of the Government and, with respect to the Congress of the Deputies, also of the demand of political responsibility ".

The length of the suspension

On the other hand, with respect to the argument that the suspension of the calculation of the terms had a very limited duration in time, which did not last one month, the judgment explains that "the duration of the agreed suspension is not so much the more the own agreement to suspend the processing of the parliamentary initiatives of the members of the Chamber, because such a decision entails in itself a disempowerment of the function that the Constitution has conferred on the Congress of Deputies, such as the control of the Executive; constitutional function of control that must be exercised with the maximum intensity during an exceptional state, such as in this case the state of alarm, in order to guarantee in this way the rights of citizens and the rule of law itself ".

The sentence has the particular vote formulated by the president of the TC,

, who disagrees with the majority because the restriction of the rights of the deputies adopted in the agreement of the Table of March 19, 2020 does not have aptitude by itself same to restrict in an unconstitutional way the right to political participation of the recurring deputies. In his opinion, it was a proportionate limitation of his rights to political representation given the current situation of an unprecedented health crisis caused by Covid-19.

On the other hand, the private

of Judge

indicates that the appeal for protection of the formation of Santiago Abascal had to be dismissed because the suspension of the calculation of the deadlines, in extraordinary circumstances of extreme gravity and unpredictable as those experienced in In March 2020, it passed a proportionality check in the strict sense.

In his opinion, this suspension did not imply an interruption of the functioning of the Congress proscribed by article 116.5 of the Constitution, because it affected only - and for a short period of time - the parliamentary initiatives that were being processed in the Chamber.

A private vote

Lastly, the private opinion of Judge

, to which Judge

adheres

, shows his disagreement with the argument and with the ruling on the appeal for amparo, considering that the Board of Congress adopted the contested measure to protect the integrity and health of the deputies and staff of Congress.

These magistrates believe that an analysis applying the test of proportionality to the suspension of terms leads to the conclusion that neither the incidence in the parliamentary activity nor its duration were such as to consider that the

of the recurring parliamentarians was affected.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• Congress of Deputies

• Coronavirus

• Vox

• Justice

• constitutional Court

• Covid 19

CourtsA Constitutional Court broken debate on the second state of alarm and the permanent reviewable prison

JusticeThe TC rules that the bolt of Congress during the pandemic violated the rights of the deputies

Politics Meritxell Batet justifies the closure of Congress annulled by the TC in that it was "limited in time"

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