The PSOE has consummated this Thursday the maneuver to favor that Junts has its own parliamentary group in Congress. The Socialists will lend four deputies to Carles Puigdemont’s party so that with them it can be justified before the Congress Table that they consider the requirements established by the House regulations to be fulfilled, and that the pro-independence party could not achieve by itself. The play is identical to the one that Sumar announced yesterday with ERC.
The Congress Table, which is controlled by the PSOE and Sumar, must make a flexible interpretation of the conditions that govern the constitution of parliamentary groups. The movement is basically summed up in considering that it would be enough to reach 15% of the vote in Catalonia as a whole and not in each of the four Catalan constituencies.
To reach that 15% threshold, the PSOE ceded two deputies for Girona and two for Tarragona to Junts. It is all the representation that the PSC brought out in both Catalan provinces. In this way, it is argued that the almost 93,000 votes it obtained in the first and the around 120,500 votes it obtained in the second should be added to the overall results of Junts in Catalonia. With this, the range of 15% is exceeded with that computation of the seven neo-convergent deputies and the four socialists.
Junts needed some 135,000 votes to achieve it, since it obtained 11.1% of the vote in all of Catalonia. That percentage could well have been added to the two Socialist deputies from Girona and the two from Lleida. Margin had with those four, but having finally opted for those from Tarragona instead of Lleida, he exceeds the 15% threshold more widely. Thus, the parliamentarians involved in this move are Valle Mellado Sierra and Andreu Martín Martínez (Tarragona) and Marc Lamuà Estañol and María Blanca Cercas Mena (Girona).
The movement has been confirmed this Thursday after the PSOE has registered its parliamentary group. It has done so, Socialist sources report, with just 117 members, instead of the 121 it has in Congress. The loan to Junts, which is also officially recognized, is temporary, so in the next few days, once Puigdemont’s party group is authorized, the four on loan will be reintegrated with their teammates.
Guaranteeing their own parliamentary group to Junts and ERC was one of the demands made by the Catalan separatists before addressing the negotiations for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. It is not a whim, it is that having him in Congress means receiving a lot of money, more advisers, guaranteeing himself a political role and having a larger quota to present initiatives. The play has been agreed between the PSOE and Sumar, who have distributed the papers so that each one can lend to one.
The origin of the Junts problem, as it happens to ERC, is in article 23 of the regulation, which dictates the conditions to form a group: “The deputies, in number not less than 15, may constitute a Parliamentary Group. They may also The deputies of 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 candidacy, shall be constituted as a Parliamentary Group 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 stopped at 9.6% of the votes in Barcelona and 11% in Tarragona.
The regulation speaks of “15% of the votes corresponding to the constituencies in which they have presented a candidacy”, but the interpretation that will be made is that it works with the whole of Catalonia and not in each of the four provinces.
Not having your own group implies ending up in the Mixed, where what is there is divided among all. On the other hand, if it is available, only in subsidies it yields a fixed subsidy of 30,346.72 euros per month plus another of 1,746.16 euros per month for each deputy. Likewise, it also means having more advisers, a turn for their own intervention with the same time as the others and a larger quota to present initiatives. In the Mixed Group, all this is distributed proportionally among its members.
The transfer of deputies to form a group has numerous precedents in Congress and is a classic movement in the Senate. Canary Coalition is, by far, the party that has benefited the most from this in the Lower House. Up to four times. The first was in 1993 when he fired a PAR deputy. This marked the first case of its kind in Congress and paved the way for future use of this option after much debate. In 1996 and 2000 the maneuver was repeated through UPN, which was already an electoral ally of the PP. Two and three deputies ceded to him in both legislatures. It also happened in 2004, when it was the PSOE who helped him with the loan of two deputies for Toledo.
There is a national party that has resorted to this possibility. Rosa Díez agreed with Foro Asturias to guarantee that UPyD achieved its own group in 2011. Álvarez Sostres contributed a sufficient percentage of the vote so that with him they together reached the 5% vote demanded by the regulation.
In 2008 the BNG helped with a temporary transfer of its two deputies to IU, ICV and ERC to form a group.
The PSOE has made it easier for the PNV and Junts to form their own parliamentary group in the Senate with the transfer of several of its senators to these formations so that they reach the minimum number required. However, the Socialists will need the validation of the Board of the Chamber, where the PP has a majority.
The Regulation requires adding a minimum of ten components to form a parliamentary group, a number that can be reduced during the course of the legislature, but can never be less than six. The PNV has five members, so the PSOE will have to give up another five senators so that it can form its parliamentary group. The same happens with Junts, which obtained three senators – there will be four after allying with the Canary Coalition, as they did in the previous legislature – so the PSOE will lend them at least six members to facilitate their parliamentary group.
Achieving a group in the Senate means having representation in all the chamber’s bodies, spokespersons and intervention and initiative shifts, as well as more financial resources, as well as human and material resources.