The Government will convene the autonomous communities as soon as possible in the Sectoral Conference on Youth and Childhood after the new meeting to address the reception of migrant children and their distribution among communities, held this Thursday by the Executive, the PP, the Canary Islands, and Ceuta, failed.
Given the collapse suffered by these two territories due to the high number of minors they have to care for, the four parties met this Thursday for a meeting, in which the Ministers of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, and Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, and the presidents of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, and Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, participated.
On the table was the Government's already reiterated proposal to modify Article 35 of the Immigration Law so that the autonomous communities are obliged to take in these minors, but once again the PP has opposed it, has requested a broader reform of immigration policy, and has dashed the expectations of agreement that the other party glimpsed at the beginning of the meeting.
However, and despite the lack of agreement, the Government is not throwing in the towel and has expressed its willingness to study formulas to achieve it.
But as Torres has said, it has to be done as urgently as possible, whether by decree law or by bill, but sufficient support is needed for it to be approved, or validated in the case of the former, in Congress.
The PP insists that the Government must change its immigration policy
The PP's spokesperson in Congress, Miguel Tellado, has voiced his party's position and has reproached the Government for going to the meeting without "any proposal".
Meanwhile, the PP recalled at the meeting the document that its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, signed with Clavijo, where a change in the Government's immigration policy was demanded, since the current one is what "has caused this situation", he told reporters.
"We have the feeling that the only commitment of Pedro Sánchez's Government is to modify Article 35", Tellado continued, who at the meeting demanded greater support from the Executive for both the Canary Islands and Ceuta, "which are suffering this collapse at the moment due to the disastrous immigration policy".
Unlike what other countries do, Spain, according to the PP, is not capable of stopping illegal immigration. On the contrary, because, in Tellado's opinion, the Government "has made a completely irresponsible call to illegal immigration".
And he insisted: "The only interest of the Spanish Government is to change Article 35 to impose on the communities the distribution of minors and to disregard the financing of the costs involved in their care until they reach the age of majority".
Rego still believes in the agreement
That attitude of the PP is because its agenda "is highly conditioned by the ultra policies of Vox", said Sira Rego, who has censured the Popular Party for having come to the meeting "not even with the will to enter into a debate on the possibility of finding a solution for the specific situation" of collapse in the Canary Islands and Ceuta.
Because, as he stated, the president of the Canary Islands has brought a "very sensible" proposal for a specific solution with a commitment to financing that has also not been accepted by the PP, which puts party politics "above the general interest of the rights of children and the needs of the territories".
According to Rego, the PP wanted to negotiate individually with each autonomous community, but her ministry is going to convene the Sectoral Conference as soon as possible to address this reception, for which the reform of Article 35 is "essential". The minister does not consider the negotiation to be over, believes that it is "a matter of the country" and considers that more alternatives can be evaluated.
She recalled that they are ready to transfer the 50 million euros to the Canary Islands from the contingency plan to address the migration crisis and said that there is already an agreement to grant a budget item to Ceuta "to take care of the arrivals of children in recent months".
Torres: "We don't give up"
For his part, Torres, who recalled the steps that have been taken to reach an agreement, reiterated that the Government's desire is to respond to the "emergency" situation in Ceuta and the Canary Islands due to the high number of unaccompanied minors, and the answer, in his opinion, is the reform of Article 35 in the most urgent way possible.
"We do not give up trying to modify the law; it is the only solution, the other ones are temporary solutions", added Torres, who has expressed his willingness to have the number of minors to be distributed be the one that existed in February or March 2020.
That the negotiation is transferred to a Sectoral Conference is not what the Government of Spain or those of the Canary Islands and Ceuta wanted, Torres asserted, who recalled that one was held to distribute 400 minors and "there are still communities" that have not taken them in.
He also referred to Ceuta, where after the February agreement -"and we are in December", he stressed-, only 80 minors have left the city out of the almost 500 that are in that territory.
Ceuta appeals again to solidarity
And after this new failure, the president of Ceuta has once again appealed to the solidarity and co-responsibility enshrined in the Constitution.
"Now that we are going to celebrate it, I recall that the Constitution conceives a decentralized and complex State in which institutional loyalty is fundamental to resolve State matters such as this one", he emphasized.
He is confident in an agreement because the people of the Canary Islands and Ceuta "cannot feel helpless", added Vivas, who did not want to blame anyone, not even his party, the PP, for this new failure in the face of a "limit and unsustainable" situation in his city, which has "exceeded" its reception capacity by 400%
