A few weeks ago, the Plenary session of the Constitutional Court dismissed by majority the appeal of unconstitutionality presented by the PP against three points of the Royal Decree-Law 1/2021, of January 19, on the protection of consumers and users in situations of social and economic vulnerabilityalready repealed, and another paragraph of its preamble, which modifies Royal Decree-Law 11/2020, of March 31, by which urgent complementary measures are adopted in the social and economic field to deal with covid-19.
The sentence had the particular vote of two of the judges of the Constitutional Court, the judges Concepción Espejel and Enrique Arnaldowho affirmed that the decree had to have been declared unconstitutional because it exceeded and exceeded the material limits that the Article 86.1 of the Constitution imposes decree-laws. Said limits prohibit this resource of governments from affecting the rights of citizens recognized in Title I of the Constitution, among which is the right to property.
Direct blow to the right to property
“The current regulation deprives owners of the use and enjoyment of the home and limits their power to dispose of it by the individuals affected by the rule,” they highlight. However, “they must continue to cover the corresponding tax charges, the expenses inherent to the property and the consumption enjoyed by third parties.”
The magistrates believe that the power to dispose of the home by the owners is severely limited. And this is aggravated because, according to them, the regulations act for the “benefit of those convicted in criminal proceedings (for illegally squatting a property), to the detriment of the rights of injured owners.”
The effects of a crime already sentenced are prolonged
For Espejel and Arnaldo, the right to effective judicial protection of the injured parties (the owners) is affected in terms of the right to enforceability of final judgments. The extension of the anti-eviction measures supposes the suspension of pitches of the inhabitants of illegally occupied houses, which “favors those who occupy a house without any title, prolonging the effects of the same to the detriment of the affected”. And it is that, they add that, in no case “can it be considered justified by the allusion to the social function of property that the public powers must guarantee.”
And it is that, in addition, the owners “must continue to bear the tax burden corresponding, the bills inherent to the property and the consumption enjoyed by third parties”.
Illegitimate use of the decree-law
Another part of the particular vote of both magistrates maintains that the government used an inappropriate mechanism in the use of a royal-decree to legislate on the protection of consumers and users in situations of social and economic vulnerability.
“The situation that did not respond to the extraordinary and urgent need that is established for this type of circumstance,” they say. “It is not, in any way, a clause or expression empty of meaning within which the margin of political appreciation of the Government moves freely without any restriction, but a true legal limit to action through decree-laws”, and it is at the same time The Constitutional Court itself, to which it is responsible, ensures that the public powers are within the framework of the Constitution. Espejel affirms that as in the alarm decrees during the confinement heThe power was reserved to the Cortes Generales and not only to the Government of the Nation.