The Congress is scheduled to debate and submit to a vote this Tuesday a bill promoted by the PNV that proposes to eliminate the requirement to attend mandatory extrajudicial negotiation mechanisms in family proceedings involving minors, with the aim of shortening the times and speeding up the processing of these cases.
"Forcing parents who are in conflict over issues affecting a minor to go through an extrajudicial procedure before reaching trial can prolong these processes and cause a boomerang effect contrary to the desired objective," say the Basque nationalists, who justify that with this legal reform they intend to preserve the best interest of the minor.
The text of the initiative, which Europa Press has accessed, specifies that disagreements in the exercise of parental authority usually refer to matters that require a response "with some urgency, such as authorization for a school change, a trip, a religious event, an extracurricular activity, or the start of therapy."
Prioritizing the best interest of the minor
The PNV argues that, although mediation and conciliation prior to trial contribute "to a more humane and sustainable justice," in family proceedings involving minors "the parameters for conflict resolution must be subordinated to the best interest of the minor."
According to the Basque group, after seven months of validity of the regulation that introduced new systems for resolving disputes to alleviate the burden on the courts, "it has been detected that, in practice, it is causing that when, in the absence of an agreement, the court must grant one parent or the other the authority to decide for reasons of time, the object has disappeared with evident harm, in many cases, to the interest of the minor."
Therefore, the PNV demands a modification of the Law on measures regarding efficiency in the Public Justice Service to exclude the application of these conflict resolution instruments when the rights of minors are at stake.
Shortening times and ensuring a hearing
"Once citizens have had to go to the courts of justice, it is necessary to try to ensure that within the shortest possible time there is a judicial resolution that ends the conflict," emphasizes the legal reform.
In addition, the parliamentary group led by Maribel Vaquero proposes in its text to modify the Civil Procedure Law to incorporate that the holding of a hearing in these proceedings will be "mandatory".
This bill, which the PNV had already tried to introduce through amendments to other legislative initiatives, responds to the demands of numerous families represented, among other groups, by the Spanish Association of Family Lawyers, which insists on the convenience that, in the event of a separation or a family conflict, the legal system imposes "the least number of obstacles possible" to resolve the dispute and thus ensure the best interest of the child.