Brussels is weighing the request of the Spanish Government and the PP to mediate between them and unravel once and for all the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), the governing body of all judges in Spain, which should have been carried out five years ago according to the Constitution. “The Spanish authorities have asked the Commission to facilitate conversations to advance the reform of the CGPJ,” a spokesperson for the Community Executive confirmed this Saturday. “We are reflecting on this request,” he added. The Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, already offered last year to unblock the situation by taking advantage of a trip to Spain. The PP considers that Reynders, from the European liberal political family, is the “appropriate” and “appropriate” person to play this mediation role. The Government has no objections, although they would not take a dim view of it being the liberal Vera Jourová, vice president of the European Commission responsible for values and transparency.
In the same written response to this newspaper, the European Commission recalls its position on this matter, in which it has already shown signs more than once of growing impatience with the non-renewal of the Spanish body: “For the Commission, the The lack of appointments of members of the CGPJ is important and is indicated as a priority issue,” he states. The EU executive body urges that, “immediately after the renewal, a process be launched to bring the appointment system in line with European standards, in order to ensure that judicial independence is not compromised.” That is, the Commission's approach is to first renew the composition of the CGPJ with the current law and then change the law for future renewals. Reynders urged at the beginning of the month to apply this procedure – first renew, then change the law – although he added that he was open to other options if they were the result of an agreement between the PP and the PSOE.
Already in the fall of 2022, Reynders sought to play a role in unblocking the situation. He did it while taking advantage of a trip to Spain, but the Government did not see it clearly. That the popular Esteban González Pons, then MEP, met discreetly with him before his visit and with no one from the PSOE was seen by Pedro Sánchez's Executive as a suspicious maneuver. This time it seems different, since on Friday it was the President of the Government and the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who presented this unusual request for mediation to the European Commission.
For now, it is only known that the plans of the socialists and popular are for the negotiators of both parties – the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, and González Pons, deputy secretary general of the PP responsible for Institutional Affairs – to contact the next week. That is at least the intention of the Government, which wants to speed up the negotiations.
“There are no precedents”
Alberto Alemanno, Jean Monnet professor of EU Law at the HEC Paris business school, points out that “the attempt to involve the Commission in a domestic reform of justice is unprecedented.” “I consider it a slippery slope to the extent that the EU is not the guardian of the Spanish constitutional order. That is the work of the Spanish institutions,” he adds.
What affects the most is what happens closest. So you don't miss anything, subscribe.
Subscribe
Daniel Sarmiento, professor of EU Law at the Complutense University of Madrid, also sees no precedent for this type of mediation. He defends that the community Executive has “a more active and mediating role.” As he points out in a recent article, he believes that it is good that the Community Executive has a more “creative” role and does not remain in “a sanctioning approach” limited to the application of traditional mechanisms and verifying compliance with the rules. He proposes this solution for a situation like the one that occurs in the Spanish case, because “when the opposition hijacks the institutional machinery of the judicial power of a Member State”, a phenomenon that has few precedents, acting with the traditional means at its disposal The Union is ineffective.
Diplomatic sources, however, recall that, although it does not call it mediation, “the Commission frequently intervenes in national institutional issues such as regulatory bodies, statutes of national banks and jurisdictional bodies of various kinds.” “Of course, talking about mediation is incorrect in a legal and political sense. But in the country reports in the European semester and on other occasions, the Commission increasingly enters into institutional issues,” they analyze.
Growing impatience
The General Council of the Judiciary is made up of 20 members: 12 judges and 8 jurists of recognized prestige who are appointed by the Congress and the Senate by a three-fifths majority (which is why the agreement between the PSOE and the PP is needed). The nuance is that the 12 member judges are chosen by the Cortes but from a list of candidates previously prepared by the career judges themselves. The PP wants to change this election model so that the judges directly elect, without the participation of Parliament, the judges; and emphasizes that this is also the guideline set by the European Commission: to change the election method in that sense.
If Reynders finally agrees to act as mediator, he will be able to tell both parties in private what he has been saying for years time after time in public: that renewing the CGPJ is urgent and that, once done, Spain has to reform the appointment mechanism in that organ. The Belgian, for example, did so solemnly in the European Parliament in the debate promoted by the Popular Party in the European Parliament on the amnesty on November 22. To such an extent that he dedicated more time to the non-renewal of the CGPJ than to the amnesty law itself. He also let Bolaños know in person during the visit he made to the commissioner in Brussels eight days later.
The impatience shown by European officials with the situation of the CGPJ blockade can be clearly seen in the annual reports on the EU's rule of law. In its last edition, in the summer of this year, it demanded urgent renewal because its absence “is affecting the work of the Supreme Court and the judicial system as a whole.”
The report referred to the fact that, having been in office for five years, the CGPJ has limited powers and cannot make appointments, something that is due to a legal modification that the coalition government made in the last legislature to force the PP to sit down to negotiate.
Limited time special offer
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Brussels #weighs #request #mediate #Government #opposition #renew #Judiciary