The PSOE goes again before the Constitutional Court due to the movements of the PP in the Senate. This time, it presents an appeal of unconstitutionality against which, among other things, opens a way to go to court against Congress, limits the intervention times of ministers, and establishes that judges and magistrates do not have the obligation to go to investigative commissions.
In a statement released this Monday, the socialists explain that they have taken the step by considering that this reform was carried out “irregularly” in its procedure through alleged “technical corrections” approved by the PP that were not debated or voted on in the Plenary of the Upper House. The PSOE emphasizes that they denounced at the time that the fifteen corrections constituted “new amendments presented and admitted after the deadline.” And they emphasize that these alterations “denaturalize the parliamentary procedure” and “undermine” the rights of opposition groups.
Now, the party is appealing eight precepts of the new Regulations, understanding that they violate the Constitution and “substantially alter the institutional balance and the correct functioning of the legislative procedure between Congress and Senate.” Specifically, it questions the articles that allow a committee of the Upper House to convert a text from the Lower House into law without a vote in plenary, in cases in which amendments or vetoes have already been rejected and no group has requested its elevation. For the socialists, this provision “simulates” a procedure of legislative delegation in committees without the prior agreement of the Plenary Session, something that, in their opinion, is in open contradiction with article 75.2 of the Constitution and with the Senate Regulations themselves.
The PSOE also challenges the precepts that introduce the figure of the so-called “presumptive veto”, “equating the rejection of a legislative text by an absolute majority of the Plenary to the formal approval of a constitutionally provided veto.” The formation defends that this comparison “directly contradicts” article 90 of the Constitution and the consolidated doctrine of the Constitution itself.
Likewise, the Socialist Group’s appeal is directed against the new article 108.6 of the Regulations, which enables the filing of conflicts of powers due to an alleged unjustified delay by Congress in the processing of Senate initiatives. At this point, the party maintains that the Regulation “cannot by itself expand the assumptions provided for in the Organic Law of the Constitutional Court nor invade the normative and functional autonomy of the Congress of Deputies.”
Thus, the PSOE insists that this new regulatory reform “resolves the permanent institutional conflict that the PP has caused in this legislature” with its absolute majority in the Senate. Within the framework of the statement, the socialists recall that this is the third appeal they have presented in this legislature before the Constitutional Court after the corresponding reform of the Regulations of the Upper House imposed by the absolute majority of the PP. As they emphasize, the first appeal was presented in 2023 and was settled with and has forced the restoration of the reformed articles. “This ruling was followed in June 2025 by a new reform of the Regulation which, in turn, was appealed by the socialists three months later, an appeal that was admitted for processing last November by the Constitutional Court,” adds the party.
