The Government of Pedro Sánchez disregarded the doctrine of the Constitutional Court (TC) with its veto to the PP initiative to reduce the VAT to the hairdressers to alleviate the effects of the pandemic. This has been shown by the Second Chamber of the Court of Guarantees in a unanimity sentence in which it reminds the Executive that this veto must be justified with damage to public coffers in the exercise in force, something that did not happen in this case, since the reform did not enter into force until 2022.
The resolution, of which the immaculate magistrate Montalbán has been a speaker, also considers that the then president of the Senate, the former Minister of Justice Pilar Llop, “just assumed to assume the justification offered by the Government and omitted any consideration about the incidence of the initiative in the budget year in force”, thus limiting the right to the exercise of the exercise of the position of the position of the Proposition of law finally severed and the right of citizens to participate in public affairs through their representatives.
And after formalizing the Executive the veto to that initiative -cifrand in 203 million the budget impact of applying to the hairdressers the reduced VAT of 10% -, the Senate table found that the government “had given a reasoned explanation of the veto” and rejected the processing of the proposal of law.
The Chamber emphasizes that in application of its repeated doctrine about the control of the parliamentary tables of the government budget veto, the disagreement of the Executive “must always refer to the budget in force at all times, in coherence with the principle of budgetary annuity.”
140 million more collection
But despite the proposition of the PP law, expressly collected that the measure applicable to hairdressing, barbershop and aesthetics services “would not have an economic cost for the current exercise
Budget and provided, according to the sector data, an increase of 140 million euros in VAT collection for the following year due to a lower closure of companies and
decrease in unemployment, “the government’s veto” does not base its opposition to the processing on the possible direct affectation or impact that the planned initiative could have in the budget year in force. “
In fact, he recalls in the resolution agreed in the application of doctrine (regarding the decision adopted in this regard by the Plenary in November 2023), he justified his disagreement “in a generic way”, limiting himself to referring to the “interference that said initiative implies in the economic and budgetary policy of the Executive.” These arguments, they emphasize, did not take into consideration “that the entry into force of the law” was scheduled for January 1, 2022, so “do not justify, as required by the constitutional doctrine in terms of budget veto, that the initiative object of veto directly affects the budget in force, assuming a decrease or an increase in income in said year.”
“The doctrine of this Court -says the Sala -recalls that the Government may oppose its veto only in those cases in which a proposal of law has direct and immediate incidence in the current budget; that is, that reasonably implies an increase in credits or a decrease in income in the same budget year” -something that was not given in this case -, specifying “the concrete budget items that would be affected.”
Reproach at Llop
But the reproach is also extended to the Senate table that presided over Llop, since it affects that “it incumbent for the parliamentary tables to carry out a regulated control over the exercise of the Faculty of the Government, of a technical-legal nature, not being able to respond in any case to criteria of political opportunity.” In short, he argues, the table “must verify the motivation
provided by the government, but without it corresponding to replace it in the prosecution of the impact, but only to verify that it is real and effective, and not a mere hypothesis. “
Since this legislature is already completed, the Constitutional is limited to canceling the parliamentary agreements challenged by the PP (the table agreement that on September 14, 2021 estimating the Government’s veto and the subsequent refusal of the 21 of that same month to reconsider that decision) and to recognize the violation of the fundamental rights of the recurrent deputies -Javier Maroto and Salomé Pradas spokesperson and spokesperson for the PP in the upper house.