Doble inconstitucionalidad de la Ley de racionalización y sostenibilidad de la Administración Local
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
The Law of rationalization and sustainability of the local administration is unconstitutional based on two grounds. First, there is a violation of the principle of local autonomy: some services provided by municipalities with less than 20.000 citizens (especially municipalities with less than 5.000 citizens) are in danger. All the municipalities will not be able to provide social services, health care or some of the most relevant services in the field of education. Municipalities only will be able to assess situations of need and to provide immediate care to persons in risk of social exclusion. The legislator imposes a hierarchy order in the exercise of the municipal competences: the proper and delegated competences come first and, after them, the municipality will be able to exercise the improper competences with the positive and mandatory report of the public administrations that hold the competence in the relevant subject and the financial resources. The report to be issued by these public administrations implies a sort of control of opportunity which is incompatible with local autonomy because of the legal uncertainty of concepts like “duplication of competences” or “sustainability”. In relation to the autonomy of the provinces, the Law also violates some prerogatives of intermediate local governments (Diputaciones). For instance, the Law provides that in some cases it will depend on the Ministry of Finances the decision to provide some services and to issue the relevant authorization for its provision. Second, the Law pursues to harmonize exclusive competences of the Autonomous Communities. For instance, the Law allocates the competences regarding social services to the Autonomous Communities and sets aside the municipalities which only can exercise by delegation these kinds of competences. Moreover, this harmonization is visible in the conditions imposed by the Law to the sectorial legislator (especially to the legislator of the Autonomous Community) in relation to the possibilities of allocating competences in favor of municipalities.