Sánchez tries to break the legislative deadlock

The Ministry of Labor wants to tighten time control, and the Treasury says it's working on the budget.

Despite the resounding parliamentary setback suffered in the final plenary session of the current political year in the Congress of Deputies, the government is announcing new initiatives to try to regain momentum and overcome the legislative deadlock. Vice President Yolanda Díaz admits that her law to reduce the working day could suffer the same fate as the anti-blackout decree, which Junts and Podemos, as well as the PP and Vox, voted against.

Carles Puigdemont's party has repeatedly stated that it will not support the Ministry of Labor's flagship measure, believing it would be fatal for SMEs, which make up the bulk of Catalonia's productive fabric. This position led it to delay the vote on the text until September to avoid a more significant parliamentary defeat.

But this delay means that the tightening of time recording and the reinforcement of the right to digital disconnection included in the measure have not yet come into effect. The leader of the Sumar party in the Executive branch anticipates that if Junts does not give in, she will approve another decree with both measures, which require companies to enable remote access for Ministry technicians to their employee work recording systems so they can verify in real time any abuses.

However, Díaz ignores that this controversial proposal also lacks the consensus of social stakeholders—only the unions support it—nor does it have the necessary votes to move forward. Similarly, the announcement by the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, that her department is already working on the 2026 State Budget is inconsistent with the statements of her colleagues, who deny having been consulted regarding the new Public Accounts.

The Government has accumulated two consecutive extensions of the 2023 budget, having failed to approve any budgetary plan or fiscal path in the two years since the last elections. The legal deadlines for processing next year's accounts have already begun to run, so, in any case, it seems unlikely that a new extension can be achieved, which would be the third for an Accounts budget designed for a very different context than the current one.

Given the progressive loss of parliamentary support following the emergence of corruption within the PSOE, Sánchez's optimism about completing his term is unjustified.