Finally there is an agreement between the PSOE and the PP to renew the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). The pact has been delayed for more than five years and has required the assistance of the European Commission to fulfill the constitutional mandate of renewing the governing body of the judges. The white smoke has arrived in Brussels, where the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, negotiator for the PSOE, and the elected MEP Esteban González Pons, appointed by the PP, have sealed the agreement supervised by the vice president of the Community Executive Vera Jourová. The pact has been possible after several frustrated attempts and five days before the end of the ultimatum issued by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who a few weeks ago warned that, if there was no solution before the end of June, he would reform the law to remove to the CGPJ the power to appoint the judges of the Supreme Court or the presidents of superior courts and provincial courts.
“With this agreement we put an end to a democratic anomaly,” Bolaños launched after signing the document. And despite this milestone, the two negotiators have come out to give accounts separately and, in both cases, accompanied by the Czech Jourová. The agreement, as both parties have explained, begins with the “immediate renewal” of the CGPJ members already in July with a list prepared jointly, with 10 members proposed by each party. Also in the same month there will be a bill that will reinforce “the independence of the Judiciary” by establishing limits so that judges and prosecutors who enter politics have limits on their return to the judicial career. The pact is based on the document that was practically closed a year and a half ago, when the PP decided to back out at the last moment. So now everything was very advanced, although the tutoring was required — “it is not my role to arbitrate,” explained vice-presidency Jourová — and this is evident in the final agreement, which at the decisive point has returned to 2022: The CGPJ will be renewed with the current law and a joint bill will be registered between the PSOE and the PP, very similar to the one that had been agreed at that time.
Specifically, according to the agreed text, it will be urged that, “within six months from its entry into force, the General Council of the Judiciary must carry out a study on the European systems for the election of members in analogous bodies and a reform proposal that will have to be approved by three-fifths of the members and be sent to the Government, the Congress and the Senate, so that the owners of the legislative initiative submit it to the consideration of the Cortes for debate and, where appropriate, processing and approval.” González Pons has defended that the pact guarantees that justice is “more independent” and begins “a path away from politics and politicians.” Bolaños, for his part, has considered that the CGPJ will be able to start working in July “with full legitimacy and with a mandate ahead to carry out its mission.”
Although much work had been advanced, it has taken almost six months since the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, demanded the participation of the European Commission as guarantor of the potential agreement to return to the negotiations. “The agreement has been guaranteed by the European Commission and that is very important for the PP. Without this guarantee, we would not have signed,” said González Pons, hinting at the lack of trust in the Government. However, Brussels has been mediating since January and it was not until a few days ago that the pact began to be touched upon, a deadline that coincides with the President of the Government’s ultimatum. It has also coincided with the message that was issued from Jourová’s team, which indicated that the Czech was not going to accept a new meeting (there were several with the Belgian commissioner Didier Reynders, now on leave, but with the vice president only this one, the last ) if there were no concrete advances on the table.
Reinforcing the role of the Commission, this Tuesday both negotiators emphasized that the basis of the agreement was the 2022 and 2023 rule of law reports, in which the Union Executive analyzes the situation of justice in each Member State . In these documents, it is stated that Spain had to quickly renew the CGPJ, to fill the vacancies that exist in the Supreme Court and for justice to function normally again and then proceed to reform the method in which it is done according to the criteria of the Venice Commission, to reinforce judicial independence with respect to other powers of the State.
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To close the pact, the commitment to work on a subsequent reform of the mechanism for electing judges has been important, something that will begin with a report prepared by the new CGPJ within six months and that will then pass to the Legislature (Congress and Senate ). The 2022 agreement already had very similar wording of this proposal. The PP insisted that it wanted the PSOE to assume that the judges elect the judges, but the socialists rejected that idea and only assumed this, that the CGPJ make a proposal for the future. Finally, the popular people accepted this intermediate path, which was already in 2022, and which was then valid for Alberto Núñez Feijóo and now he also does so again, despite internal criticism from the harshest sectors that demanded something more emphatic.
Both parties have also agreed this afternoon to fill the pending vacancy in the Constitutional Court that, at the proposal of the Popular Group in the Senate, will be occupied by José María Macías, current member of the CGPJ. Minister Bolaños has clarified that this agreement is limited to the judicial field and that it would not reach other organizations already pending renewal or in the near future (Bank of Spain, CNMC, RTVE or CNMV).
This puts an end to the blockade that has affected the CGPJ for five and a half years and the ultimatum launched last week by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, declines. The leader of the PSOE announced that if the PP did not reach an agreement before June 30, the PSOE and its partners would reform the law so that the CGPJ stops arbitrarily appointing Supreme Court judges and does so using objective criteria. A third of the Supreme Court justices have not been renewed, and with this unlocking they would begin to do so with a completely different CGPJ than the last 10 years in which conservative dominance was very clear. In fact, the current council responds to a Congress of Deputies of 2013, with an absolute majority of the PP.
The new members of judicial origin of the Congress will be Ángel Arozamena (magistrate of the Supreme Court), Esther Erice (magistrate of the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra), Gema Espinosa (Provincial Court of Barcelona), José María Fernández Seijo (commercial judge of Barcelona), José María Páez (senior judge of Málaga) and José Carlos Orga (Provincial Court of Logroño). Those of the Senate are José Antonio Montero (magistrate of the Supreme Court), José Eduardo Martínez Mediavilla (president of the Provincial Court of Cuenca), Esther Rojo (president of the Provincial Court of Valencia), Carlos Hugo Preciado (Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia ), Alejandro Abascal (National Court) and Lucía Avilés (criminal judge of Mataró).
The legal members of the Congress are José Luis Costa Pillado (president of the Consultative Council of Galicia), Inés María Herreros Hernández (prosecutor), Pilar Jiménez (superior prosecutor of Cantabria) and Argelia Queralt (professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona and lawyer of the Constitutional Court). Finally, the jurist members of the Senate include Ricardo Bodas (retired judge of the Fourth Chamber of the Supreme Court), Bernardo Fernández (former president of the Consultative Council of Asturias), Luis Martín Contreras (lawyer of the Administration of Justice of the Third Chamber of the Court Supreme Court) and Isabel Revuelta (Cortes lawyer).
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