The Supreme Court annuls the Government agreement that excluded the two most affected municipalities of Huelva from subsidies to eradicate irregular settlements of seasonal workers | CGPJ | Judiciary | Supreme Court

2024-04-26 11:00:00

The Third Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court has annulled the agreement of the Council of Ministers, of November 22, 2022, which granted public subsidies to the municipalities of Lepe and Moguer (Huelva) to promote the eradication of settlements irregular temporary workers in their municipalities, considering that it was “irregular” for excluding from this aid the municipalities of Lucena del Puerto and Palos de la Frontera, which are the most affected by this problem.

The Chamber has upheld the appeal filed by the Lucena del Puerto city council and has annulled Royal Decree 983/2022 that regulates the direct granting of these subsidies on the grounds that it did not respect the principles of objectivity and transparency that govern the granting of subsidies. public subsidies.

“Neither the appropriate procedure was followed nor is any convincing factual or legal circumstance or reason explained that justifies why the appellant city council of Lucena del Puerto was excluded from this aid,” underlines the ruling with a presentation by Judge Diego Córdoba.

For this reason, it is agreed that a competitive competition process be initiated aimed at granting the aid provided for this purpose, laying the foundations for the call and allowing the municipalities affected by this problem to participate in it.

In this case, it indicates that there were reasons of public, social and humanitarian interest to improve the situation in which the seasonal agricultural workers who reside in substandard housing settlements in several municipalities of Huelva found themselves, but what is not proven are the reasons that They prevented the convening of a competition procedure between the town councils affected by this problem to obtain the available aid.

He adds that the Administration “chose to maintain communications with four municipalities asking them to present their proposals, but it did not call for aid nor set bases for evaluating the proposals nor ultimately channeled the decision based on a prior procedure.

On the contrary, it resorted to informal communications that concluded in the direct granting of aid to two of the municipalities involved, leaving out other municipalities directly affected by this problem.” For the Chamber, “this way of acting is irregular and lacks justification to support the use of the exceptional channel that implies the direct granting of subsidies.”

On the other hand, he states that it is also very relevant that of the four municipalities affected by this situation, the two municipalities in which, due to the number of settlements and/or the number of seasonal workers, the situation was more worrying, were excluded.

Remember that, from the reports prepared by the State Administration itself, it appears that from the comparison of the different municipalities from which it requested proposals to avoid settlements, the City Council of Lucena del Puerto has the highest number of settlements (7) and It is the second town in number of settled people (614) after Palos de la Frontera, which has a single settlement with 1,000 people.

It explains, however, that the two municipalities that were granted the subsidy have a smaller number of affected workers: Lepe with 5 settlements that affect 422 workers and Moguer with 3 settlements that affect 280 people.

For this reason, it considers against the law “the distribution of limited public funds, disregarding any competition procedure, to finally directly grant the subsidy to some municipalities without explaining why it excludes other municipalities that have a more serious problem of workers.” “temporary workers residing in their municipal area.”

The Chamber understands that the reason given by the administrative resolution of lack of diligence by the City Council of Lucena del Puerto, unlike the City Councils of Lepe and Moguer, lacks consistency. “The circumstances in which the communication with the affected town councils took place, the submission of their proposals and the drafting of an Action Protocol that allowed the granting of aid, far from endorsing that the Lucena del Puerto Town Council did not behave diligent, allows us to maintain the opposite and introduces well-founded suspicions that the granting of this aid was predetermined in favor of certain municipalities to the exclusion of others.”