Employers' associations and entities pressure the parties to allow the processing of the professional public management law in Parliament

• The Entity Forum (FERA) fears that the opposition will cause the processing of the text to collapse
• The project imposes selective processes based on "merit, capacity and suitability"
• Companies and other organizations ask to debate the regulation "without excuses and with generosity"

Concern among employers' associations, professional associations, chambers of commerce, and other entities regarding the possibility that the modernization process of the Catalan administration may be paralyzed. The Forum of Entities for the Reform of the Administration (FERA), established almost two years ago, demands that opposition parties in the Parliament of Catalonia allow the bill on professional public management, approved by Salvador Illa's government, to be processed. The alarm has been raised because the deadline for submitting amendments to the entire text ends this Friday; the PP has already promoted one, and it is feared that other forces such as ERC or Junts will take the same step, which would cause the processing to fall through.

"We are not going into the content, whether the executive's proposal is good or not, but rather we want it to at least be processed so that the parties and involved entities can have their say afterwards," explain business sources. FERA fears that a sum of amendments to the entire text will prevent the start of the discussion of a regulation aimed at modernizing the administration. "All parties support it. It would not be understood if they now avoided moving forward and wasted the political opportunity," they add.

The bill was approved last July and FERA applauded it, not for considering it perfect, but because it meant the beginning of the professionalization process for public managers in the Generalitat and, therefore, the reform of the Catalan administration. The regulation, as it is drafted, would affect more than 700 people in high-ranking positions, including directors-general and deputy directors-general, out of the more than 260,000 public employees that the Generalitat has.

Merit, capacity, and suitability

The text provides, for example, selection processes for these positions "based on objective criteria of merit, capacity, and suitability; the evaluation and accountability of management personnel in such a way that the continuity in management positions will depend on the fulfillment of the objectives established in management agreements, guaranteeing continuous monitoring and periodic evaluation of their performance".

It is time to debate it "without excuses and with generosity", because "if it fails in Parliament due to the inability to reach a political consensus or due to the approval of an amendment to the entirety (which would mean that the text of the project would be rejected in its entirety and returned to the Government, and that the legislative process would stop), we will have lost a unique opportunity to modernize our administration", highlights the FERA in a statement.

"The incorporation of a professional public management model is a key piece of the administrative reform and cannot be postponed any longer. Precisely, the demand to professionalize public managers was one of the 10 claims that more than 300 entities made in November 2024 at the Llotja de Barcelona and which were collected in the Civil Society Agreement for the reform of the administration", they recall.

The political groups that claim to be in agreement with the commitment to professional public management "cannot now stall or excuse themselves with the argument that it will be discussed through the Catalan public employment law", they argue from the Forum. In fact, the demand is not that the text of the bill be kept as it is now, because they consider it "improvable", but that "it be debated without further delay, and that the necessary changes be made". They recall that "there cannot be a good country without a good administration", and that "there will hardly be a better administration without the professionalization of public management."

Part of FERA are entities such as the Catalan Association for Public Management (ACGP), the Catalan Association of Professionals, the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, the Vallesan business association Cecot, the Catalan associations of Economists, Industrial Engineers and Political Science and Sociology Professionals, the ESADE Alumni Public Management Club, the business entity FemCat or the Third Social Sector Table. It is defined as "a meeting space for Catalan civil society entities that defend the need to address, in a constructive and demanding way, the long-demanded reform of the public administration; which, in the current economic, social and political context of the country, is essential and urgent."

In Catalonia, in recent years, numerous debates and proposals have been produced on this matter, ranging from the Catalan congresses on public management to the White Paper on the Catalan Civil Service or the Report on Good Governance and Administrative Transparency, among others.