The Government has opted to withdraw from the agenda of the plenary session of Congress the bill to reform the Land Law, as it faces insufficient support for its processing. The request for withdrawal was presented to the Congress table just after 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, an hour before the scheduled debate.
The PSOE, which needed the support of the PP to prevent the bill from being returned to the government, did not achieve the necessary backing, as both Sumar and its parliamentary partners opposed it. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda has indicated that the decision is linked to the start of the election campaign and has been taken with the aim of ensuring a more successful future processing of the project.
The purpose of the reform was to give greater legal certainty to urban plans, allowing for the correction of defects in form without the need to completely annul them, a practice that differs from current regulations. The ministry also seeks to limit legal actions that seek to extort or threaten in the context of urban planning.
According to the ministry led by Isabel Rodríguez, more than 100 urban plans have been annulled in recent years, many of which could have been saved from becoming obsolete if they had been updated. This situation has led to prolonged legal uncertainty, discouraging some municipalities from proposing new plans or continuing to work with old plans that do not reflect current needs.
The reform establishes clear differences between the total annulment of a plan due to substantial defects, which can be fully challenged, and partial annulments that do not affect key aspects and which allow for a one-year correction period.
As for housing developed by administrations on public land, the reform proposes that, in the event of administrative inaction for the usual period of six months, this should be interpreted as an affirmative response to proceed with the projects.
Ángel Víctor Torres, Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, has reaffirmed that the Government will not abandon the reform of the Land Law and plans to reintroduce it in Congress seeking a "broad consensus".
The development and construction sectors defend the amendment of the Land Law
In this sense, the private sector, which valued the measure as "positive and necessary", will continue to influence its processing. In fact, the Association of Real Estate Developers of Madrid (ASPRIMA) has expressed its disappointment at the withdrawal of the draft Land Law, arguing that the proposed reform was crucial to streamline processes and provide legal certainty to urban planning. According to the Association, the law would have facilitated land management, an essential resource for increasing housing production and improving access to decent and affordable housing for citizens.
ASPRIMA emphasises the importance of having a law that provides legal certainty in the urban planning field. The law, described as well articulated from both a legal and technical point of view, would have prevented urban planning from being paralysed by mere defects of form that can now be prolonged for many years.
The Association has called on the PSOE and the PP to adopt a broad perspective and reach a consensus that would allow negotiations to resume and the Land Law to be approved in the shortest possible time. ASPRIMA stresses that access to housing is one of the greatest challenges facing society today and affirms that the only viable solution is to significantly increase housing production, something that requires regulatory changes that facilitate the generation of land, a central aspect of this law.
"The sector has been calling for many years, with an imperative need, for a land law that will give legal security to Spanish urban planning".
On the other hand, the president of the Association of Developers and Builders of Spain (APCEspaña), Juan Antonio Gómez-Pintado, has also expressed his opinion on the withdrawal of the Land Law by the Executive.
The president of the employers' association pointed out that "the sector has been calling for many years, with an imperative need, for a land law that provides legal certainty to Spanish urban planning, and which, furthermore, addresses one of the main problems we have as a society: the lack of access to housing". Gómez-Pintado pointed out that "once the law has been analysed by the professionals who make up APCEspaña's housing and urban planning commissions, we believe that the law meets the requirements to provide the legal security that is needed".
The developers' representative assured that "We will continue to insist from the association that we need a pact for this law to be passed". For this reason, Gómez-Pintado stated that "given the obvious possibility that it could be rejected, I believe that this withdrawal is appropriate in order to give negotiation a chance".