The Congress Table has given the green light, with the support of PSOE and Sumar and the abstention of PP, to the reformulated non-legislative proposal by the socialists with which they seek for the Chamber to commit to promoting legal changes that require the current leader of the opposition, the 'popular' Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to report exhaustively on his assets and all his remuneration, both in cash and in kind, which, in the opinion of PSOE, should include the details of how the housing in which he resides with his family in Madrid is financed.
This proposal, registered for discussion in the Plenary, has its roots in the insinuations made by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to Feijóo at the end of June, during the last debate in Congress on the corruption cases affecting PSOE.
Sánchez then suggested that Feijóo was not correctly declaring the payment for the housing in which he lives in the Madrid neighborhood of El Viso, hinting that it could be funded by PP and that, therefore, it should be listed as remuneration in kind. The PP leader later responded that he and the mother of his child cover the costs of that house.
Initially, PSOE presented a text that did not pass the examination of the Congress Table. Following the criteria of the legal services, the governing body requested the socialists to reformulate the initiative, after the Chamber's lawyers had questioned both the content and the formal fit of it.
The jurists warned that the proposal affected matters that are internal competencies of Congress and, in particular, of the Table itself. Furthermore, they pointed out that the figure of the non-legislative proposal is not the appropriate mechanism to demand the adoption of agreements from Parliament, since it is a tool designed for the control function, and they reminded that this control is directed at the Government and not at the deputies, as would occur in the case of the head of the opposition.
Consequently, PSOE re-registered the initiative with a different wording, which no longer obliges Congress to promote that deputies "reflect in their declarations of assets, activities, and economic interests all the information about their assets, income or in-kind remuneration, activities and economic interests," but limits the mandate to the promotion of the necessary legal reforms to achieve that purpose.
That is to say, instead of demanding that the Chamber act directly in that line, as the initial version did —thus invading the powers of the Table—, the new text from the PSOE urges Congress to legislate to achieve the same result.
After reviewing the new formulation, the Table of Congress proceeded this Thursday to qualify the initiative, with the favorable votes of PSOE and Sumar and the abstention of the PP, according to parliamentary sources indicated to Europa Press.
They eliminate the direct reference to Feijóo's housing
The socialists have also adjusted the second point of their proposal, in which there was an express reference to the leader of the opposition. Now they intend for the Chamber to commit to promoting the necessary regulatory modifications to ensure that whoever performs that role includes in their declarations of assets, activities, and economic interests all the information related to their wealth, remuneration in money or in kind, donations, activities, and economic interests."
Likewise, in the new version, the PSOE has removed the specific reference that, within the section on remuneration in kind, Feijóo should state "the payment of his current housing."
The mentions of the "preeminent position among the authorities of the State that the decree of General Order of Precedences in the State" protocolarily recognizes to the leader of the opposition have also disappeared, although the caveat that whoever holds that condition must provide the aforementioned information in their declarations "whether or not they are a member of the Cortes Generales" remains.
Adjustments in the statement of reasons
The PSOE argues its initiative on the basis that the leader of the opposition, who politically embodies the alternative to the Government, must be required "a special transparency in their declarations of assets, activities, and economic interests."
However, the socialists have introduced changes in the statement of reasons, from which they have removed explicit references to Feijóo. Thus, they have eliminated the mention that on the Congress website only the declaration that the leader of the PP presented upon taking office in August 2023 appears, in which he informed of his previous remuneration as president of the Popular Group in the Senate and as president of the PP, without having updated it since then.
In contrast, in the new text the PSOE emphasizes that it is "unacceptable for a person who intends to lead the alternative government to do so while hiding their assets, the donations they receive, or who facilitates their extremely high standard of living." For this reason, they insist that the Chamber has "the duty to promote whatever actions are necessary to prevent the falsehoods in the assets published by political leaders."