The PSOE lowers the law on stolen babies: changes the name, does not talk about victims and eliminates the Special Prosecutor's Office

The processing of this norm can open another gap between the government partners given their antagonistic positions

MADRID, 2 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The PSOE wants to reduce in Congress the content of the bill on stolen babies that it signed with its parliamentary partners and that Unidas Podemos urged to unblock. Among other proposals, the socialist amendments change the name and the statement of reasons, substitute the concept of victim for affected, suppress the criminal effects by referring to the Penal Code and eliminate the proposal to create a Special Prosecutor's Office.

This bill was registered in February 2020 with the signature of the PSOE, Unidas Podemos, ERC, Bildu, PNV, Junts, Más País-Equo, Compromís, the BNG and the CUP. Due to quota issues, so that it would not be prevented from defending other initiatives, United We Can withdrew its signature some time later, although not its support.

The text was taken into consideration by the Plenary Session of Congress in June of that year, with the only vote against being Vox, but since then it has been kept in a drawer and the terms for amendments have been extended for two and a half years. At the beginning of this year, Unidas Podemos demanded that the PSOE reactivate its processing and, after several weeks, the Socialists finally agreed to put an end to the period for presenting amendments.

But when the PSOE has registered its own, to which Europa Press has had access, its idea is already very different from what it signed in 2020 because now it wants to change the name and the explanatory statement of the law, as well as a good part of its key points.

From the outset, he does not want the law to be called "stolen babies" and proposes to rename it "proposal for a law on guarantees for those affected by the abduction of newborns", consistent with instructions from the Ministry of the Interior on the matter.

In addition, he no longer speaks of "crime victims" in the case of stolen babies, but of "people affected by the abduction of newborns", and he intends to eliminate from the preamble the allusion to an order of the Central Investigating Court of the National Court of which Baltasar Garzón was the headline, in which there was talk of 30,000 children separated from their mothers, since he considers that such a figure is "a conjecture".

The PSOE also limits the scope of application of the norm: "It is considered pertinent to limit the consideration of affected to the relatives of a person abducted in a straight line and up to the second degree of collaterality, which would include a reasonable number of people" , holds.

Likewise, it intends to remove from the law any reference to criminal consequences, since it considers that the Penal Code "already has enough criminal offenses to prosecute this type of crime", and calls for focusing the rule on "guaranteeing the rights to the truth". In other words, his idea is to make it easier for those affected to access the information they need, but not so much to point out the culprits of what happened.

In this sense, the Socialist Group considers that the law should only contemplate the compensation agreed by the Justice in accordance with the current legal system and now rejects the idea of ​​creating a Specific Prosecutor's Office on stolen babies, alleging that the General Prosecutor's Office has already signed a collaboration agreement on this issue with the ministries of Justice, Interior and Health in 2013, when the PP governed with an absolute majority.

On the other hand, the PSOE avoids charging the inks in the demands of information to the Church and, rather than assessed mandates under threat of lawsuit, prefers to bet on collaboration agreements with the Episcopal Conference, remembering that relations with the Catholic Church are regulated in the agreement with the Holy See.

And with respect to the State Bank of DNA that appeared in the original initiative, the PSOE now refers to the regulation provided for in the already current Law of Democratic Memory "to avoid overlapping functions and regulatory dispersion."

In view of these amendments, the processing of this law may open another gap with United We Can and with the parliamentary allies of the Government, since the philosophy of the PSOE is very different from that proposed by the other formations.