This act comes in response to the new security challenges facing society in the 21st Century. It defines national security and strengthens the State's ability to offer solutions to these challenges in a swift, effective and coordinated fashion.
In order to tackle these crisis in both a preventive and reactive manner, the National Security Council will head up and coordinate the pertinent actions, assisted by a specialised crisis management committee, which seeks to improve coordination between the different tiers of government in order to speed up these situations and make responses to them more flexible.
Situations of interest for national security
An important new feature of the act is the regulation of situations of interest for national security, which seeks to cover a legal loophole that previously existed between the most serious crises provided for in Constitutional Law 4/1981, on states of alert, emergency and siege, and those other situations that are tackled with standard resources and means by the competent authorities.
Under this new situation, fundamental public rights and liberties will not be affected, since the aim is to ensure more efficient coordination in the use of State instruments, nor will it result in changes to the ordinary fulfilment of the respective powers of the competent authorities, which will act from a declaration of the situation by the President of the Government taken under the direction of the Government.
Moreover, the national security policy is enshrined as a public policy under the responsibility of the government designed to be employed with the broadest parliamentary backing possible.
Regulation of national security system
The national security system is also regulated with the participation of the various public authorities, as well as the private sector and society in general, under which the emphasis is on a new comprehensive approach to crisis management and the organisation of the contribution of resources.
This act, whilst stepping up the government's powers to respond to very different challenges that strike at the foundations of the Rule of Law and the liberty and well-being of citizens, will be useful in creating a national security culture whereby citizens feel they play a leading role in the new public policy on the issue through the channels for citizen participation strengthened by the new law.
Pool Moncloa