What legislative challenges does Mexico face in 2023?
We are about to begin a new year, leaving behind a 2022 that could easily be described as convulsive. This was no exception for the Mexican legal system, which was subject to substantial transformations. As a brief recap, let us recall reforms of such impact as the approval of the “dignified vacations“, which doubled the vacation days provided by the Federal Labor Law; the discussed constitutional reform in electoral matters, or the incorporation of the National Guard to the National Defense Secretariat, changes promoted by the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Other reforms were the elimination of the Summer Schedule, as well as the enactment of the new Mobility and Road Safety Law, to affect traffic regulations in all states of the country.
Naturally, the reorganization of the Mexican legal framework generates a mixture of uncertainty -as well as expectations- regarding the transformation of our country’s institutions. The business sector, more than qualifying the goodness or badness of the reforms, must prepare itself, first, to ensure its own adaptability and resilience in the face of new challenges. This foresight cannot be possible without key information to work with. For this reason, we propose to outline, schematically, the legislative challenges that Mexico will face in 2023.
A first legislative challenge will come from the regulations that will need to be issued to ensure conditions that allow foreign companies to locate their operations in Mexico, within nearshoring schemes, as proposed in the Economic Package for 2023. The world economic situation, particularly the predicted economic recession in the United States of America, as well as the geopolitical conflicts worldwide, make our country an ideal geographic point to maintain low production costs within the proximity to our northern neighbor and as an entry point to Central and South America. In this sense, the Congress of the Union should focus on ensuring the operability of this type of business projects, through legislation, especially in areas such as tax, labor, and customs, within a framework that respects economic competition and commercial freedom.
The discussion on the electoral reform was postponed until next year, to define the changes to which the National Electoral Institute and the electoral institutes of each state will be subject. Although it seems that the reform will not be made from the Constitution, due to the lack of a qualified majority required for such purpose, it is certain that a reform at the level of secondary laws could be made, in use of the simple majority enjoyed by Morena. In this sense, this party would opt to replace the Councilors of the National Electoral Institute as well as to promote new laws that would alter the operation of this body, especially by reducing its budget. However, it seems that the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation will have to resolve the very probable constitutional controversies that the opposition political parties will present before such electoral reforms. By the way, the work of the new President of the Supreme Court, Minister Norma Lucía Peña, will also be under observation, after serious accusations and controversies unleashed days prior to her appointment.
We must take into consideration that any change affecting the National Electoral Institute will have a correlative impact on the elections of 2024, in which a new head of the Federal Executive will be elected, as well as the renewal of all deputies and senators after the end of the LXV Legislature. For this reason, the focus of the legislators’ activity, at least until April 2023 (deadline for its approval), will surely concentrate on promoting the changes that are of interest in the electoral laws.
On the other hand, the legislative agenda has not addressed issues that have been expected for some time, such as the enactment of the new National Code of Civil and Family Procedures, which has been pending legislation since the constitutional reform approved in 2017. As it is the competence of the Congress of the Union, at the federal level, the different federal entities have not been able to assume procedural reforms that face the problems generated by the Covid-19, so it is urgent that the Legislative Branch assumes this task and brings it to completion.
The same happens with the regulation of cannabis, a matter in which it has not been possible to issue legislation that addresses the concerns of people and economic activities related to this substance. The Supreme Court of Justice of the Union ordered the regulation regarding its use, recreational consumption, and commercialization since 2019, for which reason the obligation remains pending, unfulfilled; this year we will see the progress made by legislators in this regard.
Our country will face numerous challenges this year, both in terms of its institutional and democratic life, as well as in its response to external factors that represent opportunities or threats to the Mexican population. For this reason, it is logical to foresee an energetic legislative activity that will result in numerous reforms in a wide variety of topics, without ruling out the possibility of those of a constitutional nature. To a large extent, it is valid to conclude that the good lawyer will be characterized by his or her ability to anticipate changes, as well as by his or her versatility when it comes to adjusting to them.
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Ricardo Chacón López-Velarde
Leonardo Brown
ECIJA Me
