The pearls of the Law on the acceleration of strategic projects

PalmThe culmination of the legislature with the Popular Party at the helm of the Government has arrived one year before the elections with the approval of the Law on the acceleration of strategic projects by Parliament this Tuesday. This is the last omnibus law that Marga Prohens will be able to push through before the May 2027 elections. Precisely for this reason, the popular party, hand in hand with Vox, have taken the opportunity to modify about fifty laws, amid the opposition's complaints, even though the PSIB has also taken the opportunity to introduce amendments that have nothing to do with the reason for the initial decree-law.

In fact, some of the amendments that have been approved do not respond to any urgent need of the citizens of the Balearic Islands, who continue with the same problems that the popular party inherited from past legislatures and have not solved: housing, tourist saturation and structural mobility problems. The spokesperson for MÉS per Mallorca, Lluís Apesteguia, has been one of the most critical of the need to introduce measures such as "the legalization of pigeon shooting in popular festivals". "What does this have to do with an acceleration unit for strategic projects, which is supposed to attract foreign investment?", he asked, in addition to criticizing that the popular party and Vox are pushing forward an initiative that he described as "a show of sadism" towards animals. "It allows for organized and festive pigeon shooting competitions, it has nothing to do with any plague", he said.

Apesteguia has listed other measures that occupy a peculiar place in a regulation on attracting investment and economic transformation, such as the regulation of nautical canoeing practices, the blue crab shellfish harvesting, the reservation of places in the local police for military personnel, and that municipal agents can carry taser guns. "They have taken the opportunity to include things they had agreed with Vox or things that came to some councilor's mind", criticized Apesteguia, and recalled article 125 of the Parliament's Regulations, which establishes that amendments must be related to the title of the law. Modifying laws in this way "limits the right of representation of deputies", because the amendments cannot be amended. That is, if they do not agree, they can only express it with their vote, but they cannot make contributions as they would if the modifications had not been worked on in this way.

In fact, Apesteguia has spoken of a "festival of amendments" in which the volume of changes that PP and Vox, and to a much lesser extent PSIB, have taken advantage of to introduce was such that there were moments when "the deputies did not even know what they were voting for". "They arrived at committee and processed more than 100 amendments in minutes. We had to interrupt the committee more than five times. They didn't even defend the amendments they approved," he reproached the PP, and he has questioned some examples, such as the creation of the anti-squatting office to please Vox: "In the first six months, only eight cases were handled at the City Council," he argued to point out that it is an unnecessary body.

Beyond the anecdote

Setting aside anecdotal measures, the Strategic Projects Acceleration Law affects important areas of citizens' lives. Below we present a summary.

Language

• Students exempt from Catalan will be so indefinitely, and not for a maximum of three years as until now.
• Teachers will be able to apply for positions of very difficult coverage without accrediting any level of Catalan. This alters article 23.2 and 23.4 of the Law of Linguistic Normalization, which leaves no room for professionals without this requirement.
• Posts with a deficit of civil servants will also not require Catalan from applicants (they will be considered deficit posts with five or fewer candidates).
• The grade required for Baccalaureate students to obtain the C1 level of Catalan is lowered.

Housing and Urbanism

• Companies and investment funds will be able to buy housing at a set price, which is the one with the lowest price and which until now could only be acquired by individuals. The opposition has accused the Government of importing Ayuso's model to the Islands.
• The deadline for launching housing projects considered strategic is extended: it goes from 12 to 24 months.
• The urban planning amnesty is changing: administrative silence will no longer be interpreted as positive, but as negative. This change has been made in anticipation of a ruling by the Constitutional Court that could overturn positive silence. What is not known is what will happen to owners who have regularized their rural housing with positive administrative silence if it is declared unconstitutional.

Tourism

• Reduction of fines for offenders: if a property illegally rented to tourists enters the residential rental market, the owner will save 80% of the fine.

Administration

• The use of the responsible declaration is universalized.
• The institutional advertising law is modified to reduce control over spending.

Environment

• The Law on the Conservation of Environmental Relevance Spaces (LECO) is changed to relax controls.

Social services

• The conditions for accessing the Guaranteed Social Income (Resoga) are modified and three years of residence will be required.
• Unaccompanied minors will also have to prove three years of residence to receive the emancipation income, a condition that was not previously required.

The amendments that were left by the wayside

There are also amendments that have not prospered, in large part due to the public reactions they provoked when leaked to the media. Among these are the one that allowed hunting in protected areas of Menorca and the one that deprived children of irregular immigrants with physical and cognitive disabilities of medical attention: it was enough for one of the parents not to have the papers for it to be withdrawn. The amendment that removed environmental processing for large commercial areas was dropped along the way, largely due to pressure from small business associations. An amendment from the left to create a news council at IB3 has also not prospered.

Regarding the PSIB amendments that have gone ahead despite having nothing to do with the law, these include the one regulating transport with driverless vehicles (VTC) to combat unfair competition against the taxi sector and a reform of the structure of the Tax Agency of the Balearic Islands (ATIB).