The Constitutional Court has confirmed its endorsement of the reform of the Organic Law of the Judiciary that prevents, since March 2021, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) from making discretionary appointments while it is in office, a situation in which it has been since December of 2018 due to the PP's refusal to renew it upon expiration of the five-year mandate established by the Constitution. The court of guarantees has rejected in its plenary session this Tuesday the appeal presented by the PP against the limitation of powers of the governing body of the judges, as it already did in October with an appeal from Vox in the same sense. The decision was made by 7 votes from the progressive majority compared to 4 from the conservative minority. The ruling comes on the eve of the start of negotiations between the Government and the PP to try to unblock the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, through a meeting in Brussels in which the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, will act as mediator.
The ruling approved today is the second on the prohibition of the Judiciary from making appointments once their mandate has ended, a measure approved by the PSOE in the previous legislature due to the lack of renewal of the governing body of the judges. The first ruling issued in this matter was the one that led to the rejection of Vox's appeal, and it was handed down on October 2, also by 7 votes to 4. In fact, the new resolution represents the reiteration of the doctrine of the previous one, which He considered the limitation of the powers of the governing body of judges to be in line with the Constitution while it is in office and pending renewal. The law attributes to the CGPJ, when its mandate is in force, the direct appointment of judges of the Supreme Court, and of the presidents of the autonomous Superior Courts of Justice, the National Court and the Provincial Courts.
The resolution – of which Judge María Luisa Balaguer, from the progressive bloc of the court, was the speaker – considers it fully constitutional that the law limits the powers of the Council when it has remained in office, given the “institutional anomaly” that its lack of renewal entails. , which corresponds to the Cortes and that the PP has been blocking for five years. As already happened with the ruling that rejected Vox's appeal, the alternative text proposed by the magistrates of the conservative bloc considers that the limitation of functions of the governing body of judges represents a violation of the Constitution, because it restricts the powers of a body of the State and puts at risk the independence of the Judiciary.
The ruling that now endorses for the second time the prohibition of discretionary appointments – the regulated promotions of judges and magistrates by rank continue to be among the powers of the Council of the Judiciary in office – is based precisely on the anomaly represented by the lack of renewal of the Council . In this sense, the text argues that “the acting General Council of the Judiciary must be able to develop the powers that constitutionally correspond to it, but subject to strict limits, which prevent this body, in a situation of extension due to the concurrence of a circumstance of institutional anomaly, compromises the future decision-making capacity of the government of the judiciary.”
The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has been in office for more than five years, during which various attempts at negotiation have been made, successively interrupted by the PP with changing arguments. The situation is increasingly critical in various instances of justice, especially in the Supreme Court, where there are already 24 vacant positions, a third of the staff in the court that constitutes the top in all jurisdictional orders. This February there will be a new retirement, with which the number of untenured positions will rise to 25 within a few weeks. The situation has caused some of the chambers to be “on the verge of collapse,” as denounced by the president of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marín Castán, also the highest authority of the Civil Chamber, at the opening ceremony of the judicial year on September 7. Marín Castán stated this in his speech before King Felipe VI, who presided over the solemn opening session.
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