The Senate definitively approves the reform that repeals sedition without the amendments suspended by the TC

MADRID, 22 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Plenary Session of the Senate has definitively approved this Thursday the bill promoted by the PSOE and Unidas Podemos by which the crime of sedition is repealed and the crime of embezzlement is modified, but -as agreed by the Constitutional Court (TC )-- without the amendments that sought to reform the system of election and arrival of the two candidates to the court of guarantees that must be appointed by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).

This reform of the Penal Code has gone ahead in the Upper House with a majority made up of PSOE, ERC, Bildu, PNV and Més per Mallorca in the face of rejection by PP, Vox, Ciudadanos, UPN, Junts, PRC, Coalición Canaria, Teruel Existe, PAR and the two independent parliamentarians. For their part, the senators from Más Madrid, Geroa Bai and Compromís have decided to abstain.

The groups that support the Government --Unidas Podemos does not have representation in the Senate-- have also rejected the five vetoes presented to the bill and all the partial amendments, therefore, since no change derived from the processing in the Upper House, this reform of the Penal Code has already been definitively approved pending its publication in the BOE.

The debate and vote in the plenary session of the Senate took place after last Wednesday night the Constitutional Court ratified the decision it adopted on Monday to suspend the parliamentary process -already in the Senate- of the two amendments incorporated into the proposal of law on sedition and embezzlement that seek to renew the Constitution itself.

The court of guarantees dismissed the appeal that the Senate itself presented to be able to debate and vote in its plenary session this Thursday on the proposed comprehensive reform. The Upper House argued that the suspension of the processing caused a "most serious disturbance" in the Legislative Branch, but the magistrates confirmed their decision and the senators had to vote on Thursday the bill without the challenged amendments.

Despite these changes in the text of the bill that came from Congress, forced by the suspension of the TC, the norm will not have to return from the Senate to the Lower House to be definitively ratified, according to what parliamentary sources have informed Europa Press.

The aforementioned sources specify that the changes in the bill have been produced by the suspension of two amendments through very precautionary provisions of the TC and that, therefore, these modifications in the norm are not the result of parliamentary processing in the Senate. Moreover, they explain that the paralysis of the amendments on the renewal of the Constitution affect the text at its origin and not in the parliamentary course of the bill in the Senate.

The bill, which has been dispatched in the Cortes in just six weeks, had as its main objective to suppress from the Penal Code the crime of sedition for which the independence leaders of the procés were convicted, although other measures were also added, such as the aggravation of sentence for concealment of corpse.

And when the time came to present amendments to the articles in Congress, the PSOE and Unidas Podemos introduced other matters such as a new crime of legal enrichment at the same time that they agreed with ERC on a modification of the penalties for embezzlement: when there is a profit motive, maintaining the current penalties (2 to 12 jail terms and 6 to 20 disqualification); and two new types: one non-profit for "private use" (from 6 months to 3 years in prison and disqualification from 1 to 4 years) and another for when the embezzled goes to a purpose other than that intended (from 1 to 4 years in prison and 2 to 6 years of disqualification).