Catalonia to pass new legislation to protect social emergency measures suspended by Spain

Barcelona (CNA).- The Catalan President Carles Puigdemont announced that the Government will prepare new legislation to protect the core policies of the social emergency law suspended by the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). The new law will include “practical tools with legal security” that will “reformulate” the suspended articles of the legislation but “keep its spirit”. Drafting a new law was the main compromise of the social emergency summit organised on Tuesday by the Catalan Government, the local authorities and the main political parties in Catalonia following the Spanish Government’s legal challenge against the social emergency law. Puigdemont described the negotiations as “long, intense and very useful” and said that the new law is needed “to restore everything the Constitutional Court has suspended”. The meeting, he said, “wasn’t about political discrepancies but about showing that this issue concerns us all”.

The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, the mayors of Barcelona and other major cities in the country, and local associations met on Tuesday to discuss a united response to the legal challenge against the Catalan Social Emergency Law. The Spanish Government has asked the TC to suspend parts of Law 25/2015, one of the more important legislative initiatives in Catalonia, which aims to protect the most vulnerable against energy cuts and other housing-related causes of poverty. Madrid considers the legislation to invade the competences of the central government.

The agreement to draft new legislation will allow Catalonia to put in the same act all policies aimed at helping those affected by energy poverty or the threat of evictions. The aim, said Puigdemont, is to provide local governments and the Generalitat with the “tools to allow us to respond” to the most pressing social challenges “as a country” and with “sound legal security”. The new law will be prepared “very quickly”, added the Catalan President, and will serve to avoid the TC suspension affecting those that benefit from the social protection provided by the challenged legislation.