On the 23rd of July 2015 the Parliament of Catalonia unanimously approved the Law on Volunteering. Its text is composed by X articles and it is the result of a wide agreement among the political forces and the work of months of debate and discussion among the presenters of the text.
Voluntary organizations gave their contributions in the process of drafting the law and they have made appearances in front of the committee, making clear the different conceptions of volunteering that exist in Catalonia.
The presenters have had to overcome the lack of initial agreement on the issues of greatest ideological charge, such as conducting volunteering programs through public administration (under the Act), the recognition of volunteering as an advantage to access to public administration (not included in the law) or the relationship between volunteering and promotion of associations (an issue which will be the object of another law). The rapporteurs highlighted the commitment and the capacity to reach agreements and to listen to different opinions, and they acknowledged the leading role of the speaker to create a text that could be adopted by all groups, on a subject that, on the other hand, has all the social support and the recognition.
The law, published in the DOG, sets the Catalan model of volunteering and gives space to volunteering modalities which until this moment weren’t object to any specific regulations, providing security to everybody: volunteers, organizations and also (which is something new) to the target group of voluntary actions. It creates a general register and sets the Council of Associations and Volunteering of Catalonia as the main consultative and advisory organ in the field.
To read the articles of the law, you can click here.