PP and Vox lift the Catalan health law for the second time and in two different laws
The land acquisition regulation approved this Monday in Parliament once again eliminates the requirement of using one's own language, except for administrative staff.
PalmVox's obsession with eliminating the Balearic Islands' native language everywhere and the PP's concessions in exchange for the far-right's support in the budgets paint a picture of regulatory situations that border on the absurd. It turns out that the regional parliament has approved the same thing twice in just one month, two different laws: eliminating Catalan as a requirement not only for doctors and healthcare workers—under the pretext that they didn't want to come to the Balearic Islands for this reason—but for all healthcare personnel in any health department, with the exception of administrative staff and similar positions.
This Monday, the People's Party (PP) and Vox approved a new article that eliminates the Catalan requirement for the majority of healthcare personnel in the Balearic Islands. This text is identical to the one approved a few weeks ago in the Law on Megafarms. And they did so, once again, in a law that also has nothing to do with the issue: the land acquisition law, which will allow construction on rural land. This time, again, based on a Vox initiative that the PP decided to support, with the entire left voting against it.
The curious thing about this case is that the articles now approved modify the Civil Service Law, which established Catalan as a requirement for all workers in the regional, island, and municipal administrations. What has caused this mess is that "a repealing provision has had to be included in the Law on Mega-Farms within the Land Acquisition Law itself, approved this Monday," explains the president of the Balearic Cultural Work, Antoni Llabrés, to avoid having two identical articles approved for two different regulations in just three weeks. "A true regulatory chaos," says Llabrés, for whom "the content of this new article is the same as that already included in the Law on Mega-Farms. It's absurd," he asserts.
Furthermore, the PP and Vox also approved this Monday an increase in the period for people undergoing stabilization processes to prove their knowledge of Catalan. And they have done so, again, in the regulations to deregulate rural land. The period for stabilized civil servants to prove the level of Catalan required before being given a position is doubled from two to four years.
In the hands of the Constitutional Court
The reduction of the Catalan requirement and its specific elimination among healthcare professionals has been in the hands of the Constitutional Court for some time. At the end of May, the high court admitted the appeal filed by the Balearic Cultural Work (OBA) against the second decree-law that lowered the language proficiency requirement in healthcare. The Plenary Session had already ruled on the first appeal on the same issue, but without addressing the merits, given that the challenged decree-law was no longer in force. The president of the entity indicated at the time that what will likely happen is that a third appeal will have to be addressed.