The Government has approved in the Council of Ministers this Tuesday a decree-law to lower the parliamentary majority necessary in the renewal of the board of directors of Radio Televisión Española (RTVE)going from the current two-thirds to the absolute majority. The law introduces a series of changes to the current 2006 law, approved during the mandate of socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and which regulates public radio and television. Among the modifications, some of them explained during a press conference after the Council of Ministers by the head of the Digital Transformation cabinet, Óscar López, more power in decision-making is granted to the presidency of the corporation and its advisors go from the current 10 to 15, with a mandate of six years and exclusive dedication. The legal text, advanced by The World and confirmed by this newspaper, it will have to be validated within a period of 30 days in Congress from its publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE), foreseeably tomorrow. These are its essential aspects:
Change in the majorities to appoint the members of the board of directors. The current governing body of RTVE, fruit of the pact reached in 2021 by the PSOE, the PP, Unidas Podemos and the PNV has five of its members whose mandate has expired since the end of March. In addition, they have a vacancy that corresponded to the PSOE and that had remained unfilled since the resignation of the presidency and the council of José Manuel Pérez Tornero in September 2022. The Government has promoted this legal change due to the impossibility of agreeing on a renewal with the PP during the last few months. “It is necessary to act urgently in the face of the anomaly that several councilors have exhausted their mandate and that the body does not have a presidency appointed by the Congress of Deputies,” says the explanatory memorandum of the decree-law. The current law of 2006 provides for an election of councilors for the renewal by a two-thirds majority of the Cortes (234 supports, in the case of Congress). The new rule allows the vote to be carried out by absolute majority (176 votes in the lower house) if it is not possible to achieve two-thirds.
Increase of the board of directors: from 10 to 15 members. RTVE’s governing body will increase its size, going from 10 to 15 members. Their mandate will last six years and they can only be elected once, although “they can be re-elected in the first renewal, but not in subsequent ones.” The appointment of councilors is distributed in the new decree-law between 11 elected by Congress and four by the Senate, while the current law provided for the election of six councilors in Congress and four in the Senate. It is emphasized that the directors will be “all of them people with sufficient qualifications and professional experience, respecting the principle of balanced presence of women and men in their composition.”
Interim status of current directors, who can repeat their duties. Until the renewal of RTVE’s governing body occurs, the new rule provides in its Sole Transitional Provision that the current directors “will remain in office, limiting their functions to the ordinary management of the corporation’s affairs.” The current composition of the board of directors maintains three members proposed by the PP (Jenaro Castro – who directs and presents a weekly interview program at night on La 2 -, Carmen Sastre and Consuelo Aparicio, whose mandates have expired since the end of last March); three, at the proposal of the PSOE (Concepción Cascajosa, Elena Sánchez and Ramón Colom, the latter also with his mandate expired); the two from Unidas Podemos (Roberto Lakidain and Jose Manuel Martín Medem); and that of the PNV (Juan José Baños, with his mandate expired). The sole Additional Provision of the decree-law provides for the termination of the mandate of the current directors when the renewal becomes effective, “without prejudice to their possible re-election only once.”
Greater parliamentary representation. The expansion from 10 to 15 councilors will allow the entry of groups that were not present now, such as ERC, Junts or Bildu, given that the formation of the current governing body is due to a previous parliamentary composition prior to the elections of July 23, 2023. By leaving only four members to choose from in the Senate, where the PP has an absolute majority, the weight of this party in the governing body of RTVE is diluted. If the PP does not enter into the agreement, a more than likely scenario at this time, the most realistic scenario is that there will be 11 councilors from the majority, divided into up to six groups, and four councilors from the PP, elected by the Senate.
“Exclusive dedication” of the directors. The corporation’s directors will have “exclusive dedication,” something that until now only the person who holds the presidency of the corporation had. The fifth modification of the decree-law establishes that directors “will be subject to the regime of incompatibilities established in commercial legislation for administrators, being in any case incompatible with the parliamentary mandate.” In addition, they will be subject “to the regime of incompatibilities of senior officials of the General Administration of the State.”
More power for the presidency. The election of a new presidency among the councilors appointed by the Cortes corresponds to Congress, by a proportion similar to the vote of the governing body of RTVE: two-thirds of the Chamber (234 supports), but “if a majority of two is not achieved thirds, that same proposal will be submitted to a new vote forty-eight hours after the previous one, requiring an absolute majority.” The person who holds the presidency of RTVE also gains more executive power. Among its functions not provided for in current law are “appointing and dismissing the management team of the RTVE corporation” and “approving all contracts, agreements, agreements and legal transactions not included in article 16.4g) of this law.”
Possible sole administrator for a term of three months, extendable. Another modification is related to the appointment of a sole provisional administrator for the corporation. The new decree-law enables the Government to propose the appointment of a sole provisional administrator to the Congress of Deputies, in the event that the Chambers have not proceeded to the election of the corresponding councilors, or to the election of the titular person. of the presidency. This provisional administrator, whose appointment is subject to a two-thirds majority in the first vote and an absolute majority in the second, was already contemplated in Royal Decree-Law 4/2018, of June 22. The third modification of this new decree-law establishes that the election of said administrator will require obtaining a two-thirds majority in the first vote, or an absolute majority in a second round 48 hours later. The Sole Provisional Administrator would have a maximum mandate of three months, extendable if during that period “the election of the corresponding councilors or, where appropriate, the election of the person holding the Presidency had not been carried out.”
