The first examination of the PSOE-Junts relationship: will you facilitate your own group in Congress?
A first touchstone to measure the direction that the relationship between the PSOE and Junts can take will be the formation of the parliamentary groups in Congress. On August 17, the Cortes are constituted, and from that date there are five days for it. It happens that neither Carles Puigdemont's party nor ERC meet the requirements for having their own group. Therefore, whether they are autonomous and not integrated into the mixed group will depend on the Congress table. That there is a gesture.
Article 23 of the regulations of the Congress establishes the following: «The deputies, in number not less than 15, may constitute a Parliamentary Group. The deputies of one or more political formations who, even without meeting said minimum, have obtained a number of seats of not less than five and, at least, 15% of the votes corresponding to the constituencies in which they have presented a candidacy or five percent of those issued in the Nation as a whole, may also constitute a Parliamentary Group.
Both Junts and ERC obtained seven deputies each in Sunday's elections, but they failed to overcome the 15% barrier in all the Catalan provinces. For example, the Republicans remained at 12.3% in Barcelona and 14.7% in Gerona; while Puigdemont's formation remained at 9.6% of the votes in Barcelona and 11% in Tarragona.
Therefore, according to the regulation, they do not meet the requirements. “Together they will want to have their own group…”, they slide in the PSOE.
For them to have a group, one option, for example, would be for ERC and Junts to get together, add the BNG deputy and with 15 members they could. But as are the relations between the Catalan formations, that path seems unfeasible. In addition, it would mean sharing economic resources and losing prominence.
In the last legislature, the Chamber fixed a fixed subsidy whose amount, for each Parliamentary Group, was 30,346.72 euros per month and a variable subsidy depending on the number of Deputies of each of them of 1,746.16 euros per month for each deputy. Some resources to take into account and that encourage the purpose of having your own group.
In this situation, the safe-conduct of ERC and Bildu would happen because the Congress table made a flexible interpretation of the regulation and, since there are seven deputies, grants them the grace of having their own entity. But for this, the first thing would be that in the governing body there should be a majority sensitive to that parliamentary autonomy. This is that, for example, the PSOE had the presidency. In 2011, the Abertzale Amaiur coalition was left without its own group, because a table with a majority of the PP decided so. They were only one tenth away from forming a group, failing to achieve 15% of the corresponding votes by constituency in Navarra.