The investiture of Pedro Sánchez is also at stake in a crucial decision: to make it easier for ERC and Junts to form their own parliamentary group in Congress, an aspiration that with a strict application of the Chamber’s regulations they cannot achieve without external help because they do not comply on their own the conditions themselves. Well, that help has begun to arrive. A movement that can be framed in the open negotiation aimed at the Catalan separatists end up supporting the formation of a progressive government headed by Sánchez
The way that has been found is the transfer of deputies. Thus, Sumar will lend ERC two of his own so that the Republicans can claim before the Congress that now they do meet the conditions and that they have the right to do so. And the PSOE will do the same with Junts, according to sources from the formation, in the absence of official confirmation. The justification that would be alleged is that thanks to these two parliamentarians it would reach 15% of the votes in all of Catalonia. Understanding the autonomous community as a set of the four constituencies where it has been presented.
Sumar sources explain that it would lend itself exactly to its deputies for Girona and Tarragona in order to reach that percentage of the vote. Then, once the ERC group is officially constituted, those same parliamentarians will leave and rejoin the Sumar Plurinational Group with their colleagues.
First of all, the key to everything that is about to happen is in article 23 of the regulations of Congress, which establishes the following. “The deputies, in number not less than 15, may constitute a Parliamentary Group. Deputies from one or more political formations who, even without meeting said minimum, have obtained a number of seats of not less than five and , at least, 15% of the votes corresponding to the constituencies in which they have presented a candidacy or 5% of those issued in the Nation as a whole”.
Both ERC and Junts obtained seven deputies each in the elections, but they failed to overcome the 15% barrier in all the Catalan provinces. The Republicans stayed at 12.3% in Barcelona and 14.7% in Girona. For its part, Puigdemont’s formation remained in 9.6% of the votes in Barcelona and 11% in Tarragona.
The strictest way to transfer deputies would have been to lend eight to ERC and another eight to Junts, but this entailed problems. Article 27 says that if a group is left with less than half of its members, it would have to dissolve. Therefore, it could only be done by leaving the entire legislature to an infiltrated deputy.
That is why a formula has been sought that seeks to make a flexible interpretation of the regulations of the House by the Board of Congress. In it there is a majority of PSOE and Sumar and, therefore, there is an absolute predisposition to do it. A path has been chosen that consists of conceiving the 15% requirement for Catalonia as a whole and not for each of the four constituencies, as has been done historically. Thus, Sumar obtained a total of 76,614 votes in Girona and Tarragona (35,118 and 41,496, respectively). These ballots together with the total votes of ERC in all of Catalonia would place the Republicans at 15.3% of the vote.
This percentage would allow ERC to register a parliamentary group before the end of the period established for the constitution of parliamentary groups next Friday.
As the case is similar, in the PSOE they already anticipate that the same will happen with Junts. An identical maneuver by the Socialists in the provinces of Lleida and Girona would lead Puigdemont’s party to reach 15% in all of Catalonia.
Unlike Sumar’s movement, the PSOE would have to leave four deputies, twice as many. The two that he obtained in each of those circumscriptions, in order to be able to compute in this new interpretation all the percentage of vote obtained.
Having their own parliamentary group offers the parties juicy financial resources, a greater number of attendees, times in all the House debates and a quota to present initiatives.