The Government takes the first step for what aims to be one of the great reforms of the legislature in the field of Justice: a comprehensive transformation of access to the judicial and fiscal career. The draft, approved this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers, protects by law the scholarship system for candidates who will also have the opportunity for the first time to prepare for exams in a public body, the Center for Legal Studies (CEJ).
The initiative, which will now go to the report process of the advisory bodies and then begin the parliamentary process, also creates a public registry of preparers, who will have to request authorization in all cases to carry out this activity and guarantees the call for places for the called fourth shift, which allows access to the judicial career based on merit and experience, without passing an opposition.
The document, to which elDiario.es has had access, pivots on three aspects: the promotion of equal opportunities, the promotion of “excellence” in access to the career and the search for “plurality” in certain bodies that Now they are chosen by direct vote of the judges. “It is a giant step in the modernization of Justice in our country, an essential advance,” said the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers.
Opposition to judicial and prosecutorial careers is demanding in time and, therefore, in money. It requires dedicating between eight and ten hours a day to studying, which makes this task practically incompatible with performing any job that allows one to earn income for around five years, which is the average time it takes for a candidate to access the degree. And to that we must add the fees of the private preparer, who can charge around 200 euros per month; and the price of manuals and materials. 98.71% of the judges of the last promotion had the financial support of their parents during the preparation of the opposition, according to data from the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). 64.52% of the total had not worked before.
With the aim that all students with a vocation can choose to be judges, prosecutors, lawyers of the Administration of Justice or lawyers of the State without family income conditioning their decision, the draft bill protects by law the scholarship system that the Government established launched in 2022. And it does so, furthermore, guaranteeing that its amount can never be less than the Minimum Interprofessional Salary (IMF): 1,134 euros per month in 14 payments, in the present. The aid will be granted annually and may be extended for a maximum of four years. In addition, they will be compatible with those that already apply in some autonomous communities.
The ‘Seré Scholarships’, in reference to the objective of allowing young jurists to “be” judges, prosecutors, lawyers of the Administration of Justice or State lawyers regardless of their economic capacity or that of their families, currently have a budget of 5.2 million and 792 beneficiaries and its amount is 6,611 euros per year. The new endowment doubles its amount.
Furthermore, the reform aims to leave this scholarship system outside of political fluctuations and involves its institutionalization as a permanent public policy. The objective is to avoid precedents such as the one that occurred in 2012, when the Popular Party Government annulled the scholarship program that had ruled since 2006with the Executive of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (PSOE).
The Government reform also puts an end to the preparation of oppositions as an eminently private business. Thus, it aims to convert the Center for Legal Studies (CEJ), located in Madrid, into a public space for preparing exams for judges and prosecutors. Furthermore, the objective is for the CEJ to reach agreements with other provincial entities so that opponents who do not reside in the capital have the opportunity to go there to prepare part of their oppositions.
In any case, the complexity of preparing for these exams means that, for the most part, those who take the exam do not carry it out alone. The usual thing is to “prepare” with active judges and prosecutors who act as tutors during those years of study, guide and evaluate the applicants until they feel ready to take the exam.
This is a figure on which the Government also focuses. And it does so by demanding “in any case” the granting of compatibility by the CGPJ to judges who prepare oppositions (also to those who give talks or conferences). Under the current regime, they must only request this authorization if this activity occupies them more than 75 hours per year. Furthermore, no one monitors those who do not request that permission. Now, the draft bill imposes on the CGPJ the duty to launch a public registry of judges and magistrates who also act as opposition preparers.
The intention is to put an end to the current black market for trainers, in which professionals charge up to 200 euros per month per student, generally in envelopes that do not go through Treasury controls. The fee rises to 300 euros per month when the preparer is at the highest levels of the courts. There are magistrates who prepare up to fifteen students at a time, according to an investigation by elDiario.es. The obligation to request compatibility and be part of the registry also connects with public scholarships, which require proof of payments to the preparer. Without an invoice, there is no public aid possible.
End to the solely memory model
Another leg of the reform is a comprehensive reform of the current model of free-shift examinations, in which the ability to memorize legal rules takes precedence by passing a test and two oral exercises. In the new regulation, an oral test will be eliminated and a written and anonymized test will be introduced, which will consist of a practical case. “The objective (…) is to detect (…) those other skills, beyond the purely memoristic ones, that are essential for a correct and complete interpretation of the legal rules and to optimally develop the work of resolving disputes. conflicts”, includes the explanatory memorandum.
The reform also addresses other avenues of access to the judiciary, such as the so-called fourth shift, which allows access for professionals from other legal specialties through a merit-based competition, without passing an opposition. Thus, it establishes that the calls for the opposition competition must be “annual and simultaneous” with those of the free opposition. The objective is to guarantee that a quarter of the positions in the judicial career are filled for this shift, as established by law, and to reverse the current situation in which only 9.33% of the magistrates have accessed the career. by this way.
The draft also foresees changes in the access process through this fourth shift. Thus, a written eliminatory test will be taken first, duly anonymized. And only then will the merits assessment phase begin, which will be carried out among those who have proven “the required technical solidity and rigor,” which will speed up the process.
The text also ends some of the limitations that those who have entered the career this way currently have. For example, the prohibition on occupying positions corresponding to a jurisdictional order different from that through which they had entered the judicial career is eliminated. This restriction until now prevented them from accessing the presidencies of superior courts of justice and provincial courts, according to the sources consulted. The reform also provides for the creation of an opposition competition – a kind of fourth round – for the tax career.
End temporality
On the other hand, the draft law regulates an extraordinary process of consolidation of temporary employment in the judicial and fiscal careers to comply with the mandate of the European Commission to end temporary employment in the public sector. This selective process will consist of a call to access the judicial career for the category of judge and another for access to the tax career for the category of tax lawyer. The selection system will be an opposition competition, similar to that of the fourth round.
Likewise, the text includes other organic novelties for both careers. Thus, the specialization systems in the commercial and violence against women fields are modified so that professionals with certain experience in these matters have “preference”. Promotion models are also updated by replacing promotion subject to the existence of vacant positions with an automatic promotion system based on seniority. This system is also extrapolated to the tax career.
In parallel, the draft prohibits any type of sponsorship or private subsidy for judicial professional associations, which already receive public money for its maintenance. It also modifies the election processes of the governing chambers of the superior courts of justice, whose current election model results in total dominance of the judicial right. These elections are governed by a pure majority system in which they are elected the most voted candidates and in which each voter can vote for as many candidates as there are positions to be filled. The reform imposes a system of individual candidatures where the voter can vote for a single candidate, ends the delegated vote and implements telematic voting, in addition to in-person voting.
The draft also includes changes to the Judicial Ethics Commission, an independent body of the CGPJ in charge of advising judges on conflict of interest or other matters related to their integrity. The new model separates its actions from the disciplinary sphere and establishes that four of its nine members be elected by the Cortes. Currently, they are all appointed by judges, which means that members and former members of the conservative associations of the judiciary occupy their main positions.
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