MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Milei sets out the sovereignty bill he will send to Congress over the Falklands

The government wants to toughen that framework, after filing a criminal complaint last week against five companies linked to the Sea Lion project

Argentina's government was finalizing on Monday the content of the sovereignty bill on the Falklands it will send to Congress, at a meeting with its own lawmakers chaired by President Javier Milei. The executive has yet to decide whether it will submit one bill or two.

The core of the package is a reform of Law 26,659, passed in 2011 at the initiative of then deputy Fernando Solanas, which bans and penalizes hydrocarbon activity without Argentine authorization on the disputed continental shelf. The government wants to toughen that framework, after filing a criminal complaint last week against five companies linked to the Sea Lion project and raising to 60 the number of individuals and companies facing administrative proceedings, which remain open with no penalty applied.

The bill also envisages creating a National Security Council bringing together the foreign, defense and economy ministries and the State Intelligence Secretariat, with the stated aim of flagging threats to national security. Peronist lawmakers have raised the hypothesis that the body would serve as an additional route to draw on reserved intelligence funds.

That objection rests on recent budget increases. Emergency decree 867/2026, issued after the president's September 3 address, allocated 30.519 billion pesos to the SIDE, of which some 10.905 billion covers current spending and 19.614 billion capital investment for infrastructure and technology. Unlike July's expansion, this one did not increase reserved expenses, according to the fact-checking organization Chequeado. Legislative sources cited by the Argentine press argue, however, that the capital allocation could end up feeding discretionary funds. With both expansions, the agency received some 79.780 billion pesos in under fifty days, taking its current budget to around 176 billion, 82% above the year's original allocation. In 2024, both chambers of Congress repealed a SIDE increase directed entirely to reserved expenses. The opposition is preparing a formal request for information.

The same decree allocated some 217.954 billion pesos to Defense, distributed among the Army, Air Force, Navy and Joint Staff, and 119.290 billion to the National Space Activities Commission. The Integrated Naval Base in Tierra del Fuego falls under the decree, though it is not itemized separately. Defense Minister Carlos Presti and Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno traveled to the province to get the project back on track. Deputy Jorge Taiana, a former defense minister, said work began in 2021, reached barely 9% completion — a figure he attributed partly to the fact that construction in Tierra del Fuego is only possible some seven months a year — and that the current administration halted it entirely.

Separately, socialist deputy Esteban Paulón formally demanded that the executive reactivate the National Council on Matters Relating to the Malvinas Islands, created by Law 27,558 in 2020, which was to meet every 120 days and has convened only once, in August 2024. He gave the government ten business days to produce a timetable.

The package reaches a hostile Congress. La Libertad Avanza lost votes in the lower house last week and failed to secure the support needed to convene a Senate session. On Tuesday, the executive presents the 2027 budget. Opposition figures argue that, before toughening sanctions, the government should enforce existing law.