MADRID, 25 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The housing spokesperson for Unidas Podemos, Pilar Garrido, has accused the First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño, of acting as a “plug” in the processing of the Housing Law, which remains blocked and will not be resumed in the Congress until after Easter.
Garrido explained that one of the fundamental elements for the new regulations to go ahead is that the control of rental income adheres to a fixed rate, which is currently 2%. “It is what the PSOE has to get to. There, Mrs. Calviño is acting as a buffer and has blocked that part of the law,” Garrido pointed out in statements to RNE’s ‘Parliament’ reported by Europa Press.
And it is that, it is precisely in the index to stop the rise in prices where frictions have arisen in the processing of the law. Faced with the reluctance shown by Nadia Calviño’s department to set a specific ceiling, Garrido has stressed that the current 2% “is reasonable” and the public “has assumed it.”
“We cannot leave this increase in rents open,” added the deputy from United We Can, who pointed out that the current reference of 2% “should serve” to establish it in the new regulations.
In this context, the deputy from Unidas Podemos hopes to be able to reach a definitive agreement to reach an “effective” state Housing Law so that citizens “notice how” the control of “abusive” prices in rents becomes a reality.
“It is a priority that the State regulates and controls these abusive prices, so that access to housing is a right and does not continue in the situation it is in,” the spokesperson for ‘morada’ housing added.
The negotiations around this norm, which came out of the Council of Ministers more than a year ago, take place between various bands between PSOE, Unidas Podemos, Esquerra Republicana (ERC) and Bildu. This, according to Pilar Garrido, is not a problem because the conversations are “coordinated” between the investment partners, who also have the same interests.
The bill was already slow to come out of the Council of Ministers due to differences between the two government partners. Finally, the text reached Congress in February 2022, but it was not until a year later, in January 2023, when the Transport Commission reactivated the parliamentary process in a closed-door session of barely half an hour in the presentation phase.
Despite some first advances in the norm, according to the spokesman for United We Can in Congress, Pablo Echenique, the negotiations cooled down again weeks later in a scenario in which, while the Government gave the agreement “practically done”, both United We Can as ERC denied that everything was sealed.
Now the intention is to reactivate the process when Easter passes and not next week, which was the intention of several groups, according to parliamentary sources.
These deadlines would mean that the regulation would be approved in Congress before the regional and municipal elections, but not in the Senate, so that its final entry into force and its publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE) would be postponed to after 28 of May.
