The magistrates resolve by eight votes to three to allow time for the negotiation of the Council blocks and wait for the conclave on December 22
The Constitutional Court (TC) will not verify for the moment the two appointments of the Government for the partial renewal of the court of guarantees, those of the former Minister of Justice Juan Carlos Campo and the former high office of Moncloa Laura Díez after the BOE published today the agreement of the Council of Ministers, until the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) meets in plenary session on December 22 to vote for its candidates for the Constitutional Court.
The court of guarantees has officially known today the appointment of Campo y Díez by the Executive and three magistrates, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Inmaculada Montalbán and Ramón Sáez Valcárcel, have moved to urgently hold a government plenary session and assess these appointments , as established by the Organic Law that regulates the TC.
The interim president, Pedro González-Trevijano, has accepted the meeting and has agreed to vote on the request of his colleagues, who have remained in a clear minority by eight votes to three, after two theoretical members of the progressive sector, María Luisa Balaguer and José Antonio Xiol, stood out and voted with the conservative majority to give the CGPJ time to comply in plenary session on December 22 with the renewal of the TC that is its responsibility.
This decision of the court avoids for now the train wreck between the Executive and the maximum guarantor of the Magna Carta, since the same Constitution establishes that the renewal of the court must be done by third parties, that is, that the appointments of the Government must be accompanied by those of the CGPJ, the governing body of judges.
As the blockade for now is in the Council, all eyes are on the negotiators from the conservative sector of the CGPJ, who have not yet chosen their candidate and continue to lengthen the procedure despite the fact that the law established mid-September as the deadline . Therefore, they have been violating the norm approved by the Cortes for two and a half months, in clear offside despite their governmental status in the Judiciary.
The latest news happened this Wednesday. The conservative bloc requested that the scheduled meeting with the progressive members be delayed until tomorrow to assess the impact of the appointments made by the Government for the TC, within the internal negotiations to designate its two applicants and thus complete the third of four magistrates pending substitution in the court of guarantees.
“Overly politicized”
The meeting of the negotiating commission held this Wednesday lasted just five minutes, after the representatives of the conservative bloc, the members José Antonio Ballestero and Carmen Llombart, transferred their progressive colleagues, Álvaro Cuesta and Roser Bach, who were not yet ready to resume talks after the announcement of the appointment of Campo y Díez by the Executive.
Council sources already advanced this Wednesday that these appointments complicated the talks to carry out the renewal, since they are considered two “excessively politicized” profiles that would have to be compensated by betting on two “impeccable” applicants from the Council from the perspective of impartiality.
Campo was the Minister of Justice who approved the pardons for those convicted of the independence process in Catalonia and who later returned to the National Court to join its Criminal Chamber, where he has had to refrain from cases with a political background. Díez, for her part, is a professor at the University of Barcelona who was an adviser to the Government for the reform of the Statute and a former senior position in the Ministry of the Presidency of the Government of Pedro Sánchez.
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