In my opinion, one of the great needs of this country, surely claimed by almost no one else, is the implementation of a broad process of institutional rationalization in the Basque Country.
Along these lines, I suggest that the new Parliament and the government from which it emanates become aware of the matter and address in depth the simplification and updating of the complex and extraordinary Basque institutional system.
I will try to develop them or explain myself a little more in the next few days. I will limit myself now to enunciating four of the most important:
- Rationalization (read updating, integration, dismantling and/or reinforcement) of the important para-institutional framework made up of agencies, entities, companies, societies, para-public foundations and other satellite organizations of the Administration itself that act through various legal formulas and associations that have emerged over the last 30 years to satisfy different objectives and overcome the different challenges that the Government has been facing. It is time, perhaps, for a rethinking based on reason, efficiency and transparency.
- Rationalization of the number of town halls. Overcoming the inefficient model of 251 municipalities for 2.1 million inhabitants so that all municipalities have sufficient critical mass to address their own competencies and simultaneously correspond to the socio-urban reality of the Basque Country where there are urban frameworks that they configure metropolises orphaned by any institutional reference that manages them effectively in the face of a sum of nano-city councils that are often incapable and overwhelmed by their own reality.
- Rationalization of the role of the Provincial Councils, circumscribing their activity, if any, to what is proper to an intermediate institutional entity in a country as small as this.
- Rationalization of the role of the General State Administration in Euskadi by overcoming the current model that allows overlapping institutions operating in the same territory to coexist (from police forces to statistics institutes) and that allows permanent questioning of Basque self-government.
- Rationalization of the role of the Basque Country in Europe, articulating bilateral dialogue mechanisms on issues that are its own and exclusive and that do not require the mediation of State authorities other than the Basque ones.
All these reforms that are proposed are nothing more than simple opinions based on personal intuitions and perceptions. They do not intend to convince anyone because surely there is no one who wants to be convinced. They are ideas that fly through my head, surely mediated to a large extent by my own idea of the longed-for country, but deeply anchored in reason and efficiency.