The PNV will wait to know the "fine print" of the new housing decrees that the Government plans to bring this Tuesday to the Council of Ministers before deciding the direction of its vote, after the Basque formation supported last week the first of the two texts and rejected the one that established the automatic renewal of rental contracts.
Sources from EAJ-PNV confirm that the Basque Group has received a call from the Government to address the texts that the Executive intends to approve again after its defeat in Congress and the early call for general elections for the next November 29.
The formation faces the conversations from a position it already considers fixed: protection of vulnerable people and defense of small property owners, with legal certainty as a principle to evaluate the measures proposed by the Executive.
The Euzkadi Buru Batzar (EBB), the national executive of the PNV, will analyze this Monday afternoon, during its weekly meeting, the situation and the evolution of the conversations that the Basque Group maintains with the Government.
However, the jeltzales avoid anticipating whether they will repeat the direction of their votes from last week. The decision on the decree or the decrees that the Council of Ministers finally approves will be made when the party has all the information and after analyzing "in depth" the fine print of the texts and their processing, according to the same sources.
PNV supported the first decree-law
The position of the PNV may again prove decisive after last Friday the two housing decrees were rejected by Congress. The Basque party then adopted different positions on each of the texts.
In the first one, which concentrated a good part of the housing measures package, the PNV voted in favor despite having significant reservations about its content and wording. The formation justified its support because it considered that it incorporated protection mechanisms for vulnerable people, curtailed certain abuses, and improved the situation of small property owners.
The support was defined by the jeltzales themselves as "critical". The spokesperson for the PNV in Congress, Maribel Vaquero, then described the decree as a "patch" that did not solve a structural problem and criticized that the Government had legislated "in haste." She also questioned the wording of the text, although ultimately her group chose to support it.
The decree ended up falling in Congress due to the rejection of PP, Vox, and Junts, despite having the support of the PNV and other parliamentary partners of the Executive.
Rejection of the automatic renewal of leases
Very different was the position of the Basque nationalists regarding the second decree, which established the automatic renewal of lease contracts and contemplated compensation for tenants when the owner decided not to continue with the lease in certain cases.
The PNV voted against it, considering that the design of the measure was not "balanced or proportional" and could harm small property owners. During the parliamentary debate, Vaquero also warned that the regulation could lead to a reduction in the supply of available rental housing and, as a consequence, put upward pressure on prices.
The party particularly emphasized the structure of the Basque market. As it argued then, more than 90% of rental housing in Euskadi is in the hands of small property owners, so it rejected that the regulation imposed new obligations on them without establishing sufficient guarantees.
The PNV also demanded that a modification of this scope be addressed through a bill that allowed for complete parliamentary processing and the introduction of amendments, instead of being approved directly through a royal decree-law.
Finally, the second text was rejected with the votes of PP, Vox, Junts, PNV, Coalición Canaria, and UPN.
New vote before the elections
The parliamentary scenario has changed after the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced the call for general elections on November 29. The Executive plans to reapprove this Tuesday housing measures similar to those that were repealed by Congress, although with modifications in their wording.
With the Cortes dissolved, the new royal decree-laws will have to be examined by the Permanent Deputation of Congress, whose composition alters the arithmetic compared to the Plenary that rejected the measures last week.
In this new scenario, the Government has resumed contacts with the PNV, but the Basque party does not guarantee for now that it will reproduce its previous votes. Its position will depend on whether the Executive maintains the measures it supported last week, modifies those that motivated its rejection, and the legal and parliamentary conditions under which it presents the new texts.