This constitutional reform was proposed by then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador on February 5; This after the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) invalidated the modifications that Morena made to the Electrical Industry Law in 2021, as the judges indicated that these changes violated the Constitution.
The reform – endorsed by the unit commissions of Constitutional Points, Energy and Legislative Studies of the Senate with 29 votes in favor and 10 against – also eliminates the concept of “productive companies” of the State with “public companies” in reference to the CFE and Pemex.
The modifications were to articles 25, 27 and 28 of the Constitution, where it is mentioned that monopolies will not be constituted by the functions that the State exercises exclusively, such as the internet service and the lithium provided by it, “whose objectives will be preserve the energy security and self-sufficiency of the nation and provide the people with electricity at the lowest price possible, avoiding profit, to guarantee national security and sovereignty through the State public company that is established.”
Likewise, it is indicated in the reform that in the case of radioactive minerals and lithium, the federal government will not grant concessions.
In the discussion, PRI member Claudia Anaya commented that with these modifications they violate the Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC); Likewise, he said that new investments in Mexico are at risk.
“The provisions that will be modified in 25, 27 and 28 all violate the T-MEC. In the 27th, an international trade provision called ‘prior agreement’ is violated. This means that when the T-MEC was signed, and we told them that the clean and cheap ones (energy) were going to enter and now we changed it and said ‘enter the CFE first’, since the previous agreement is violated, and they They have every right to open a controversy panel against us because we did not comply,” he explained.
Meanwhile, the coordinator of the Citizen Movement, Clemente Castañeda, pointed out that these reforms are “a bad institutional design,” as he said that if we are going to talk about the preponderance of the CFE, a diagnosis is necessary about the current condition of this company. State.
Furthermore, he asserted that this company was no longer efficient and should, he emphasized, be blamed on the “neoliberal period,” because, he declared, the deterioration of the CFE occurred during López Obrador’s six-year term.
“2024 is the year with the greatest deficiency in the electricity supply so far this century. The increase in temperature in much of the Mexican territory forced Mexicans to consume more electricity without supply being able to cover demand, which has led to blackouts throughout the country. These blackouts are precisely an unequivocal symptom of the multiple problems that the CFE has today,” he declared.
