Light or good hand yet unrevealed? The optimism of the first vice president, Carlos Cuerpo, regarding the imminence of an agreement to advance the Financial Customer Defense Authority has not reached Congress.
The Minister of Economy, Commerce, and Business assured this Wednesday that the project is already "in the final phase to get it approved" and expressed his confidence in reaching a sufficient consensus throughout this month.
September was the reference marked by the Government. The vice president himself advanced in a statement before 'closing' for vacation in August his commitment to reactivate the work in September and launch the approval of this regulation.
Not only him. Several parliamentary groups acknowledged to DEMÓCRATA that both from the Ministry of Economy and the Socialist Group they had urged them to return after the summer. And that remains the plan.
However, in Congress, the reaction to these words has been, at least, one of skepticism. Despite Cuerpo giving the impression that the agreement is near, or at least they are getting closer to it, the situation is, according to several parliamentary groups, the same as before August.
"There has been neither a call, nor a message, nor a whatsapp," they summarize from Junts, a formation that holds the key for the Government to secure a sufficient majority to approve the project.
Initially, they are not particularly enthusiastic about the proposal. But they assure that the situation is the same as it was more than a year ago. The project is still waiting for the debate on its amendments to begin in the presentation phase. They have been registered since December 2024, a year and a half ago.
In the formation led by Carles Puigdemont, they do not believe that the Government is really interested in advancing the initiative. They actually believe that the Government's statements respond to a political strategy that invites thinking that there is negotiation work or possibilities of approving regulations.
But, in reality, both those statements and others that have occurred during the legislature have not been accompanied by any kind of approach or negotiation to advance the law.
DEMÓCRATA has contacted other groups and the response is the same. Despite the vice president saying that negotiations are in the final phase, the response is the same. No news.
In the case of formations like ERC or Sumar, there may be some sense since the agreements with the Ministry for the support of the norm are already closed. But in Esquerra Republicana, for example, they point out that it is not the first time that the Government has put them on notice to reactivate the initiative so that everything, in the end, remains nothing.
Approved in the past legislature
The reform in question aims to concentrate the complaint services in the financial sector of the Bank of Spain, National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), and General Directorate of Insurance and Pension Funds into a single authority.
It is one of the norms that lapsed in the past legislature when it had already been approved by Congress and only its processing in the Senate was pending. It had moved forward with only the opposition of Vox, after the abstention of PP and Junts.
The 'popular' decided to abstain after a negotiation in which they celebrated the willingness of the Ministry of Economy, and in particular the then Secretary of State for Economy, Gonzalo García Andrés, to address the concerns of the opposition.
In recognition of that spirit of consensus, the Ministry of Economy decided to process the text approved by Congress, and not the one that had been brought to the Chamber at the time, which would have expedited the timelines and accelerated its approval. The effort, years later, has proven to be futile. At least until now.