It doesn’t look like a bluff this time. With the long electoral period over, and an urgent need to return politics to a certain normality to try to return the focus to the issues that interest the Government most, especially the economy, with very good data, Pedro Sánchez has taken a clear decision: the judicial blockade must be resolved before the summer. Those around him insist that the ultimatum that he has given to the PP, after five and a half years of delay in the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), is very serious.
This week, the Government will concentrate on putting all the pressure on the PP, because even some in the Executive – less and less – think that at the last moment the popular will accept an agreement. In theory, a mediation meeting in Brussels with the European Commission should take place this week. Sources from the PP also state that the pact is not impossible, although they clarify that with Sánchez’s ultimatum it is more difficult to negotiate and they continue to demand that he change the CGPJ election system in exchange for renewing. Minister Félix Bolaños, now recovered from his appendicitis operation, is ready to meet with Esteban González Pons at any time this week. The PP, in theory, would have incentives to agree: it has pressure from the judicial world to unblock it because, as Sánchez repeated this week, there are many judges, also conservative, waiting for their positions, their promotions, their professional development, blocked by the absence of agreement. 30% of the Supreme Court seats are unfilled, for example, according to the president’s data.
But above all, the PP now knows that if it does not agree, Sánchez will rely on its majority to change the law of the Judiciary and remove from this body what is most relevant from a political point of view: its ability to discretionally appoint Supreme Court judges. , superior courts of justice and provincial courts, without the need to adjust to any objective criteria. The CGPJ could even remain blocked, if the PP does not want to renew it – in La Moncloa they are currently reluctant to change the majorities to be able to renew it without the help of the PP, as Sumar requests – but it would lose its main political attraction.
Even so, in the Government a majority of the ministers consulted believe that the toughest sectors of the PP and the conservative world, especially the media, in addition to Vox, will put so much pressure on Alberto Núñez Feijóo that it is difficult for him to accept a pact like the one he was in. practically closed at the end of 2022. “The only thing that is clear is that nothing can happen. The decision is made. If they want an agreement, the CGPJ will continue to appoint as always. If they don’t want it, we will change the law and the appointment will be unblocked but with another system as perfectly constitutional as the one that exists now,” says a member of the Government.
Another member of the Executive clarifies that the most important thing is not the discussion about progressive and conservative judges. It is evident, he points out, the imbalance that has occurred in recent years, when all the chambers of the Supreme Court have been unbalanced in favor of the conservatives. But, according to this minister, the decisive thing is not that distribution, but that the judges who reach the Supreme Court do not owe their position to the PP. “I am not so concerned that there are many conservative judges, what worries me is that many of them believe that, if they are not on good terms with the PP, it will be impossible for them to advance in the career. If we make appointments have objective criteria, we will have conservative or progressive judges, we will see, but they will be fair and independent, they will not owe their position to anyone, and that is the important thing,” he summarizes. Although there are many details missing that the Government has not yet revealed, this is the formula that Sánchez is proposing: that the Supreme Court judges be appointed with objective criteria, and not, as now, on a discretionary basis in the CGPJ.
Furthermore, this definitive battle to unblock judicial appointments after more than 2,000 days of what the president defines as “Groundhog Day” comes at a particularly tense moment in justice itself, with a formidable battle in the Supreme Court. , the heart of the decisions, to try to avoid compliance with the amnesty law. The attorney general, Álvaro García, is suffering enormous pressure because he has made the decision to impose his criteria on that of four Supreme Court prosecutors who believe that the amnesty should not be applied to the leaders of the processes because they make a completely different interpretation of embezzlement than what is in the amnesty law, according to García’s vision, which the Executive shares. The attorney general has the full support of the Government and the president, according to Executive sources, who are convinced that the amnesty will end up being applied in its entirety, because it will be endorsed by both the European courts and the Constitutional Court.
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But the actions of the Supreme Court prosecutors and some judges like Manuel García Castellón, who for the third time has received a blow from the Swiss justice system that tells him that he does not see terrorism in the Tsunami case, or Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, who investigates Begoña Gómez and insists on maintaining her statement despite the fact that the European prosecutor’s office has taken over the investigation, has the Government outraged. Some ministers admit that this is the main political challenge for the Executive, but they trust that the unblocking of the appointments, which will be achieved this month by hook or by crook, will also serve to calm the judicial battle.
Sánchez is not only in this matter, which is decisive. He is also already finalizing his regeneration plan, which will be called “democratic action”, the same name that has been given in the EU to measures against disinformation. In the coalition he is already working on an agreement in line with the new EU directive that includes greater transparency in media financing and a limitation so that public money does not reach the propagators of hoaxes or misinformation. Faced with criticism from the opposition, the Government insists that they are not going to go beyond what the EU itself recommends to fight against disinformation after a long debate on an issue that is not only of concern in Spain, but throughout the world. Western world.
The political key to these two great initiatives, that of ending the judicial blockade and that of implementing measures against disinformation, is to resolve this summer the most delicate issues – always pending the investiture in Catalonia, which is at the air and is decisive to know if the legislature gets back on track or goes awry in an uncontrollable way – to start September with a certain political normality. The Government experiences with real despair the fact that the positive economic news – record employment figures, improvements in the forecasts of international organizations but also in the study services of Spanish banks, skyrocketing profits, very high stock market – are completely overshadowed by the political noise. Since it began in 2020, the coalition Executive always moves better when talking about management, economics and numbers, and suffers much more when talking about its alliances with the independentists, its tensions with the justice system, and the amnesty. Now, after five years trying to reach an agreement, Sánchez has decided to at least resolve the judicial blockade. The PP has to decide this week if it will be by good or bad means. But what seems certain is that this issue has reached its final stretch.
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