The Government budget veto

Abstract

The long interim period of the Spanish Government in 2016 and the weakness of the Government finally installed, coupled with a highly fragmented Chamber of Deputies and the absence of a solid parliamentary majority, contributed to the emergence of a series of novel constitutional scenarios. The most significant of these was the rupture of the traditionally cooperative relationship between the Government and the Parliament, as shown by the three conflicts of powers that were brought before the Constitutional Court. The first was filed by the Congress against a Government it considered could not, absent its investiture, be subjected to parliamentary control. Others were filed by the Government against the Congress for processing legislative initiatives that violated its exclusive competence ex Article 134.6 CE, to veto parliamentary initiatives with budgetary impact. In this article, we study this second conflict, by first analyzing the legal configuration of the law of budgets, before continuing with the meaning and nature of the budget veto, issues of constitutional jurisprudence and the reforms proposed. We do this in order to propose a reform of the veto consistent with how it was envisioned in the Constitution, as an instrument for the Government’s function of direction and policy orientation and not as discretionary brake at the disposal of the Parliament.