The Constitutional Court criticizes Prohens' Decree Law abuse and strikes down part of the simplification one

PalmThe Constitutional Court (TC) has declared unconstitutional various articles of Decree Law 5/2024, which the Government approved in December 2024 to amend the PP's error in the parliamentary vote on the Administrative Simplification Law, when it unintentionally approved a package of amendments from Vox. It is still unknown which articles these are, as the ruling has not been made public. However, the high court questions in a statement whether the Executive used a decree-law, an urgent procedure, instead of a law, to amend an adverse result in a parliamentary vote.

The ruling upholds the appeal filed by more than 50 members of Congress (the PSOE, Sumar, and the Mixed Group) and concludes that the Government violated the limits of Article 86 of the Constitution, which requires an "extraordinary and urgent need" to issue decree-laws, a scenario that the court does not appreciate in this case. Government sources explain that they have not yet accessed the ruling, but the annulled articles could refer to the elimination of the Catalan language requirement in healthcare, which is what the left challenged.

The PP's mess to eliminate Catalan from healthcare

Left-wing groups, together with the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB), have challenged this decision on several occasions, arguing that the requirement to know Catalan cannot be eliminated by decree law. The PP, for its part, has tried to shield this decision (one of President Marga Prohens' first measures) by transferring it into different legal texts.

Thus, it was included in the Administrative Simplification Law that was voted on in November 2024. But during that vote, the popular party's bench made a colossal error. The deputy spokesperson for the PP, Marga Durán, confused the meaning of the vote, and they ended up voting in favor of a package of 34 amendments from Vox that raised serious issues, such as eliminating Catalan as the vehicular language in schools and as a requirement for civil servants, preventing immigrants from receiving aid, and allowing construction in specially protected natural areas. These amendments also annulled the Government article that strictly referred to Catalan as a requirement in the healthcare sector.

After detecting the error, Durán asked to repeat the vote, but Vox refused. That is why the Government was forced to approve a decree law to rectify what they had just voted on and nullify these amendments. Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court has removed some articles.

A doctrinal statement

Although the articles have been annulled, this has no practical effect. The decree-law has already been replaced by several articles of the Land Acquisition Law. Furthermore, the Government has shielded the elimination of the Catalan requirement in healthcare and also introduced it into the articles of the Balearic Housing Law. Nevertheless, the court has maintained the examination of the appeal to establish doctrine on the formal limits of the decree-law.