The recent failure to validate Royal Decree-Law 2/2026 once again places the energy sector, and especially vulnerable households, in a situation of unacceptable regulatory provisionality. The pattern repeats itself: structural measures that affect basic rights are subject to temporary majorities and emergency decisions.
An energy policy regulated with exceptional legislative measures
For years we have warned that the systematic use of decree-laws to regulate energy issues distorts article 86 of the Constitution, which reserves this instrument for situations of “extraordinary and urgent need”. As we explained in 2015 in this article , and will withdraw in 2024 with this article , the energy sector is too strategic to be regulated by decree-laws, a tool intended to act only “in case of extraordinary and urgent need” (article 86 EC). On the other hand, successive governments have been using decree-laws for years to chain short-term measures that do not contribute to guaranteeing, in the medium and long term, the protection of the most vulnerable households.
We consider it necessary to have a more stable legal framework that ensures the continuity of certain energy-related measures. We are referring to the set of measures (for example, those linked to the implementation of renewable energies), but especially to those that directly affect households with high vulnerability rates.
What is a decree law?
It should be remembered that the decree law is a rule with the rank of law, of a provisional nature, issued by the Government when “a circumstance of extraordinary and urgent necessity occurs.” It is also a tool that allows rules with the rank of law to be approved without the ordinary parliamentary procedures, debates or amendments.
Although any package of measures must be validated by the Congress of Deputies, it is a regulatory instrument designed to safeguard moments of political instability, and not to routinely regulate entire sectors, as is the case with energy.
We urge the adoption of measures that avoid the lack of protection of people and households in situations of greater vulnerability, and to move away from political tactics and the opportunistic use of legal techniques when addressing measures of a social nature.
