Section 99 of the Spanish Constitution in the Framework of the European Investiture Systems.

Abstract

Representative of people’s House’s confidence is the typical feature of parliamentary systems. In european constitutional law this confidence may be implicit or explicit and, in this last case, it may be stated before of after the goverments appointment. The historic evolution of confidence stating systems in the member states and the Commission appointment system evolution draw the attention by their parallelism: from the implicit confidence to the double confidence vote.
Article 99 of Spanish Constitution must be placed between explicit votes of confidence, introducing this vote as a previous step to the appointment, linked to a program and on the King’s proposal (with a minimal number of unavoidable consultations); and absolute majority of the House of Deputys beeing required in first turn, and mere plurality in second turn.

No vote of confirmation of the whole goverment is established, the appointment and dismiss of goverment’s members are an exclusive power of its President. Hearings system introduced by European Parliament in commissioners’ confirmation would clash with article’s 99 sprit and article’s 100 text. A constitutional reform, that the author does not think advisable, would be necessary.