The government got the Basque Nationalist Party and the Convergence and Union to retract their challenges to a bill that would create a Transparency Law in Spain. This is a evidence that Spain is strengthening its political consensus, which could increase its bargaining power in the EU.
To build consensus, the Peoples' Party made some concessions, removing the Finance Ministry's power to create sanctions from the Transparency Law.
This way, it can avoid fighting regional governments in the Constitutional Court. It is good to include political parties, labor unions, the Bank of Spain and the the Royalty -- one of the few in Europe to play an active role in governance -- in creating an independent overseer that will ensure that the Transparency Law is followed.
Now we have to wait to see if the government names the members that will belong to this overseer, as it did for the Budget Office, because then it will not have the kind of independence that it needs.
