The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which should have renewed its composition in December 2018, this Sunday completed 2,000 days of its expired mandate. The PSOE has taken advantage of the date to attack the PP for keeping blocked – due to its refusal to agree with the socialists – an institution that has had a majority of conservative members since 2013, when the popular ones governed with an absolute majority and its members were appointed for the last time. . In the midst of the European election campaign and just on the day that Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party had called a demonstration against the Government in Madrid, the PSOE recalled that the PP even requested the mediation of the European Commission in that negotiation, without that has not given any results either. And they have slipped that, if the paralysis continues, legal reforms are proposed to renew the CGPJ without having to rely on the popular ones.
This is what the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, has warned, without specifying what formula the Government would opt for: “If the PP insists on blocking and hijacking State power, obviously we will have to look for alternatives so that this blockade does not occur.” “is prolonged indefinitely as the PP seems to wish.”
The CGPJ is the governing body of judges: it appoints the judicial leadership in higher courts and hearings, as well as in the Supreme Court; and imposes sanctions, in addition to preparing reports on bills. The law has established since 1985 that the Congress and the Senate elect the 20 members of the Council: eight directly elected jurists and another 12, judges, who are selected by both Chambers with a three-fifths majority from among the names on a list provided by them. previously by the judges themselves through the collection of endorsements or proposals from judicial associations.
The PP demands that the law be changed so that these 12 members are appointed directly by the members of the judicial career, that is, without being voted on by Parliament, and therefore that the legislative power stops having the last word. The PSOE refuses. And, above all, he emphasizes that what is urgent is to renew the body, because its composition must be changed every five years, as a constitutional imperative. Meanwhile, the negotiation between the two major parties – essential, due to the majority required to appoint the members – is paralyzed.
Pedro Sánchez already opened the door to renewing the Judiciary without having to rely on the PP at the end of April, after five days of reflection in which he considered his continuity in La Moncloa. But he didn’t specify anything. The Government presented a reform in 2021 in Congress to renew the CGPJ in the first instance by three-fifths and in the second by an absolute majority, where the PP would no longer be necessary and, therefore, its blockage was circumvented. The Executive then renounced this reform after the misgivings shown by the Brussels authorities. Sánchez assured in mid-May that he does not contemplate lowering the majorities to renew the CGPJ, being in favor of “viable solutions adjusted to the Constitution and democratic legality”, although without specifying which ones.
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“This is the most illegal behavior, most contrary to the Constitution and the European Commission that the PP has ever carried out. He is paralyzing a power of the State because he understands that it is convenient for him, it is inadmissible. These 2,000 days must serve for us to reflect and be aware that it is not possible for the PP to continue with this blockade,” the Minister of the Presidency emphasized this Sunday, who hopes that “soon” and “urgently” the body to “return institutional normality.”
The reference to the European Commission is not trivial. Feijóo proposed in his last meeting with Sánchez, at the end of December, that the Commission play a mediating role as a condition sine qua non to negotiate the unblocking of the governing body of the judges. The president accepted the proposal and the Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, assumed the role of judge between the parties. Since then, five months have passed without progress with Reynders as mediator. And he is no longer: the Belgian politician resigned as commissioner in April so he could begin his campaign to become the new secretary general of the Council of Europe, an institution not linked to the EU. His replacement has been the vice president for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourová. At the moment nothing has changed, although in La Moncloa they hope to resume conversations after the European elections.
“It is a right that claims to defend the Constitution, it gives us all lessons on the Constitution and coexistence and respect for judges and for 2,000 days it has ignored the Constitution and has not shamelessly renewed the General Council of the Judiciary,” he also charged. against the PP Teresa Ribera, PSOE candidate for the European elections, at a rally in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. “They are a right that invents that we need the European Commission to mediate between the Government of Spain and the PP, because if not, there will be no way to renew the General Council of the Judiciary, and they make fun of the commissioners of the European Union and leaves them stranded. 2,000 days pass and the General Council of the Judiciary still has not been renewed. “Is that the right that is going to defend the treaties of the European Union?” added the third vice president and Minister of Ecological Transition.
From Madrid, the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has been the one who has marked the PP’s position of not reaching agreements with the PSOE. “Sánchez is going to do everything to control the General Council of the Judiciary. As in Maduro’s Venezuela and as he has always happened in all totalitarian governments,” she has settled.
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