• Keys The Government establishes by law new types of family, suppresses "large families" and approves new permits for "care"
  • Justice The CGPJ warns that the 20 types of family contemplated by the Belarra law do not fit into the Constitution

The draft Family Law, sponsored by the Ministry of Social Rights, headed by Ione Belarra, faces a difficult parliamentary procedure that could end up ruining the norm. The text, approved by the Council of Ministers on March 28 and sent to Congress with the label of 'urgent' faces the rejection of the opposition parties, PP and Vox, and also of the nationalist and independence formations, PNV and ERC.

The first group to officially record its position against the project has been the PNV that has already registered an amendment to the totality against it. The Basque nationalists consider that the government proposal attacks and "dismantles" the competency order by "triggering" the powers of the State to "harmonize, condition, direct and control" the Autonomous Communities that would become "mere executors" of state policies.

The parliamentary spokesman of the PNV in Congress, Aitor Esteban.MoyaEFE

Neither in ERC are satisfied with the bill and the same happens with the opposition groups: PP and Vox. The latter are also willing to present amendments to the entire text, while the Catalan republicans weigh the possibility of doing so. The deadline to register this type of initiative ended this Monday at 18:00 p.m. but has been extended minutes before it expired at the request of the PSOE that has had the support of the PP.

Encroachment on powers

The PNV, in its amendment to the totality already registered, expressly cites invasion of competences in policies aimed at the protection of the family, education, health, information technologies or housing. In short, the Basque nationalists consider that the measures included in the Belarra law are of a transversal nature and "go wide" beyond the Community directive on the reconciliation of family and professional life.

The nationalist formation puts as a clear example of this invasion the Seventh Additional Provision of the project that urges the Autonomous Communities to "comply within 24 months with the obligations imposed on them by law, regardless of whether those obligations correspond to matters of exclusive autonomic competence".

The PNV assures that there is "an increasingly repeated tendency of the state" to limit matters that are the competence of the autonomies by the way of "conditioning them". And he warns: "The achievement of equality between Autonomous Communities cannot without more justify the need to harmonize, since without the diversity of the communities there would be no true plurality or the capacity for self-government."

The bill transposes the European conciliation directive, something to which Spain is obliged, and also includes three new types of leave for the care of relatives, extends the concept of large family to single-parent families with two children and recognizes different types of family such as LGTBI, adoptive, reconstituted, multiple, foster or with members with disabilities, among others.

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