New attempt to reach an agreement on the distribution of immigrant minors

The autonomous communities will meet today to discuss and approve the terms of the relocation of unaccompanied migrant minors from areas of tension such as the Canary Islands and Ceuta to other regions.

The Sectoral Conference on Children and Adolescents was initially scheduled for last Monday, April 28, but was postponed due to the power outage.

The Ministry of Youth and Children brings together all the autonomous communities today

The objective of the meeting, which will be chaired by the Minister of Youth and Children, Sira Rego, is to advance an agreement on several points, aligned with the royal decree law approved by the Government and ratified by Congress on April 10.

The proposal addresses key aspects of the mechanism created by the Government, which will involve the transfer of approximately 4,400 children, most of them from the Canary Islands, during the first year and starting in the summer.

The decree empowers the Sectoral Conference to change several of its aspects if the autonomous communities agree unanimously, something unlikely, given the strong opposition to this issue from the regions, especially those governed by the People's Party (PP).

The Community of Madrid and Aragon have appealed the decree to the Constitutional Court, and the latter has also appealed the government's request to the autonomous communities for data on how many unaccompanied foreign minors each one accommodates and the call for the sectoral survey.

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The text of the royal decree law itself specifies that, unless there is unanimous agreement to the contrary, the Government will continue with the redistribution mechanism as approved.

This model, for the first time, establishes the number of minors each community should accommodate based on its population, which the text calls its "ordinary capacity." This first step has already encountered some problems, as Aragon has not provided the data, and others, such as Madrid, have not provided exactly what was requested, so the Executive is working with its own data.

At tomorrow's meeting, the Government will not present a proposal on how many minors each community should take in of the approximately 4,400 young people expected to be transferred in the first year, as it believes the distribution criteria could change within the sector itself.

The proposal to be debated tomorrow establishes that any community may ask the government to declare a migration emergency in its region when its occupancy exceeds three times its normal capacity.