The Government has reached an agreement with ERC and Bildu for the approval in Congress of the Housing Law after a long negotiation, as indicated by these two formations that will appear today in the Lower House.
As confirmed to Europa press by parliamentary sources, the agreement implies, among other things, limiting the rise in rents to 2% in 2023 and 3% in 2024, as well as lowering the concept of large holder from ten to five homes.
This is one of the key regulations of the legislature that PSOE and Unidas Podemos negotiated, which have managed to bring positions closer to these forces of the investiture bloc in recent times, with an announcement of a pact that comes on the eve of the 28M elections.
The regulation was one of the commitments reached by the two coalition partners in the General State Budget for 2021, but it also motivated an intense negotiation where PSOE and Unidas Podemos had to iron out differences until it was approved by the Council of Ministers.
In this way, it reached Congress in February 2022 and, after overcoming the entire debate in March of last year, it took two months for the presentation of partial amendments to be given free rein, and all despite the fact that the two members of the Government requested that it be processed urgently.
In this process of amendments, divergences arose again since Unidas Podemos presented partial amendments to the text, arguing that without incorporating more progress the norm would not be accepted by ERC and Bildu, whose vote is key to getting the parliamentary process to complete. Meanwhile, the PSOE made it ugly that they left the framework that had been agreed upon within the Executive, but also made contacts with the two pro-independence forces.
PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
One of the points of discrepancy was the definition of large homeowners, which in the text of the Council of Ministers was set at ten but in recent months a consensus had been reached to lower that threshold and in the end it was decided to leave it in five.
But above all, the central core that the allies of the Executive demanded was to advance in the price regulation system in stressed market areas so that it would be effective, and there a maximum increase of 2% in 2023, 3% in 2024 has been agreed and from there a new calculation will be created.
Progress was also made in terms of stopping evictions in vulnerable families and reducing the vacatio legis (the transit period until the effective application of the rule) initially set at 18 months (an aspect also demanded by Bildu and ERC).
Another essential part of the debate referred to the fit that homes that enter the rental market for the first time must have, which the purples demanded and also one of the fringes in which they discussed was to stop the revaluation of the rental price while it was being defined the price regulation system.
The purples had sent various messages to the PSOE in recent times, arguing that the approval of the Housing Law was essential for the coalition Executive to revalidate in the next electoral cycle.
