The lawyers of Congress have rejected in a report the latest maneuver of the PNV to limit the inviolability of the King and have indicated the legal justification for the PSOE, PP and Vox to vote at the Chamber Table for rejecting the bill presented last week passed by the Basque nationalists.
After studying the text, the lawyers have concluded that the proposal is unconstitutional because it seeks to change through a law a legal aspect that is expressly included in the Constitution and that, therefore, has its own reform mechanism. Being in one of the armored titles of the Magna Carta requires a reform through the hard way, that is, a reinforced agreement between Congress and the Senate, dissolution of the Cortes, calling of elections, ratification of the reform by the new Chambers and a referendum.
That the inviolability of the head of state is included in the Constitution is what has justified that on repeated occasions all kinds of issues related to it crash at the Congress Table and cannot, therefore, reach the Plenary to be debated and voted. This is what has happened with the numerous requests to create an investigation commission on Juan Carlos I.
Once again, the lawyers of the Congress stand out in line with the PNV bill that “invades the existing constitutional reservation regarding the essential elements of the Crown defined in Title II of the Constitution, by seeking a normative development contrary to the legal regime of the inviolability of the Head of State”. Article 56.3 of the Constitution establishes that the person of the King “is inviolable and is not subject to responsibility.”
The report of the lawyers is not binding but PSOE, PP and Vox will pay attention and vote this Tuesday against the admission. Instead, the forecast is that the three members of United We Can ask to process it and the result is 6-3.
The PNV initiative proposes to modify the Organic Law of the Judiciary to add an article “55 bis” by which the Supreme Court would be empowered to be competent to investigate “civil and criminal actions directed against the King or Queen during the exercise of their office in acts not subject to endorsement and that are not related to the institutional functions of the Head of State”.
With this change, what is intended is to limit the inviolability of the King to the exercise of his constitutional functions and exempt him from it when it comes to private activities. It is a modification inspired by Juan Carlos I, who has avoided being investigated for his private business and the alleged collection of commissions thanks to the inviolability of his stage as Monarch.
The PNV spokesman, Aitor Esteban, justified the initiative last week in that with inviolability an “institutional imbalance” was being generated. “It doesn’t seem logical that, under the principle of justice that presides over the Constitution, the constitutional values of equality before the law, responsibility, there should be such an extensive interpretation of inviolability as it is,” he said.
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