La propuesta de reforma del Estatuto de Autonomía del País Vasco: del Parlamento Vasco al Congreso de Diputados. El final de un ciclo (2000-2006)

Abstract

This paper examines two policy proposals related to changing the Basque Country’s political status. The first is the so-called Ibarretxe Plan, a proposal to alter the content of the current Statute, which was approved by the Basque Parliament and submitted to the Congress of Deputies as a proposal to reform the Statue. The Congress of Deputies subsequently attempted to block the proposal process and voted against debating the plan and parliamentary procedure. The Basque Government later approved a referendum vote, which was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Spain, whose interpretation of the law effectively shut down further opportunity for progress rather than seek an different interpretation that could submit this debate to the political sphere, an alternative that certainly existed and exists in constitutional law and which resulted in the Quebec referendum in Canada, for example. Political response in the Basque Country to the negative decision by Madrid was insignificant, unlike what subsequently happened in other similar cases, such as Catalonia.