Declares Article 16 and part of Article 19.3 of the rule unconstitutional and void
MADRID, 21 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Constitutional Court (TC) has endorsed most of the housing law this Tuesday after studying the appeal presented by the Government Council of the Government of Andalusia against a series of articles of the law for the right to housing that allows imposing new limits on the increase in rental prices.
As reported by the court of guarantees, the progressive majority of the Plenary has upheld part of the Andalusian Executive’s appeal and has only declared two sections of the norm approved in May 2023 unconstitutional and void: article 16, which includes the principles that govern the protected housing; and part of article 19.3, relating to the collaboration and provision of information of large holders in stressed residential market areas.
From the TC they have specified that the judges of the conservative wing Ricardo Enríquez, Enrique Arnaldo, Concepción Espejel and César Tolosa have announced that they will cast a dissenting vote against the criterion adopted by the progressive majority.
The resolution, with a presentation by Judge María Luisa Segoviano, is the first to study the matter and marks the way for future reviews that will come given that the Government of the Balearic Islands, the Community of Madrid, the Basque Country, and the Basque Country have also appealed this law. the Generalitat of Catalonia, the Xunta de Galicia, the Catalan Parliament and the PP deputies in Congress.
Specifically, the unconstitutionality appeal promoted by the Junta de Andalucía was directed against 16 articles of the law, as well as against the third additional provision, the first transitional provision, three sections of the first final provision, and the fourth final provision.
The Andalusian Government agreed to file this unconstitutionality appeal against Law 12/2023, of May 24, for the Right to Housing, after obtaining the positive opinion of the Advisory Council, which, as the Board stressed at the time, coincided with the opinion of the legal services of the autonomous Executive that the rule of the Government of Spain “invades exclusive powers regarding housing included in the Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia.”
The Junta de Andalucía started from the premise that “the State cannot legislate, not even in a supplementary manner, on housing”, and from that consideration it proposed challenging before the Constitutional Court of “all the regulations contained in the State Law of Housing around the concept of protected housing, incentivized affordable housing, large fork and public park”.
The State Housing Law also includes the regulation to declare “stressed areas” -article 18, sections 2, 3 and 4–, or “large holders” -article 19, section 1 second paragraph and 3– , which, in the opinion of the Andalusian Government, represent “a direct invasion of the exclusive powers of the autonomous communities in matters of housing and property rights.”