“If it were easy we would have already agreed, but the bridges are open.” It is the definition made by a member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) of the situation in which the negotiations of the two most relevant matters that the governing body of the judges has in their hands: the proposal on the system of election of the members that Parliament demanded and the designation of the dozens of unfilled positions in the leadership of the courts left by the long five years of paralysis promoted by the PP.
The intention, members of the conservative and progressive blocs agree, is “not to give an image of a blockade.” But, at the same time, they assume that there will be no joint proposal on the election system and predict a long struggle for the appointments of judges, mainly for the presidencies of the two most delicate chambers of the Supreme Court.
The renewed CGPJ began its mandate with the challenge of renewing a hundred vacant positions at the top of the main courts. The veto on the appointment of judges until the body was renewed caused dozens of judicial positions to continue serving their terms outside the five-year period established by law, which prevented other judges from applying for those positions. And also that there were dozens of places occupied by substitutes or directly empty. Several of these appointments are already ready to be awarded, but the members of the renewed CGPJ still have not reached a consensus.
The law establishes that a candidate must obtain 13 votes, which constitute three-fifths of the plenary session, to access these positions. The current CGPJ is completely divided in half, with ten progressive members and ten conservatives, to which is added the president, Isabel Perelló. Therefore, the election requires the agreement of councilors from both blocks. It is expected that next week representatives of both groups will resume negotiations, although in both blocks it is assumed that the main “obstacle” is the election of the presidencies of the most delicate chambers of the high court, the Criminal and the Contentious-Administrative Chambers. .
The progressive members have made it clear that they support the candidacies of Ana Ferrer, for the Criminal Chamber, and Pilar Teso, for the Contentious-Administrative Chamber, whom they already unsuccessfully proposed to lead the body. As then, the conservative councilors are opposed to supporting both candidates and have stated that they will support the other two candidates: Andrés Martínez Arrieta and Pablo Lucas, respectively. It so happens that the latter, whose retirement is near, are currently occupying the presidencies of both chambers, which leaves the conservatives with “no incentive” to reach an agreement.
In the conservative bloc they insist on the worth of both magistrates, who are also not linked to any association and to whom they attribute a certain progressive sensitivity. In the progressive sector they defend that, in contrast, their candidates have a “project” and, furthermore, “time to be able to execute it.” And they even let it slip that the members elected at the proposal of the PP may be interested in leaving these appointments paralyzed and resuming them after several months, when Martínez Arrieta and Lucas have retired and the conservative and majority Professional Association of the Judiciary (APM) can contribute others. more similar profiles.
Almost two dozen Supreme Court magistrate positions are also pending adjudication. And the presidency of the National Court and other key positions of the special court, for which an overwhelming majority of former PP officials and other conservative judges have applied.
These are negotiations in which how the parity law imposed by the balanced presence of both sexes in future appointments to the top of the courts. At the moment, there are two antagonistic reports on the table on how a norm that seeks to finally implement gender balance in the masculinized leadership of the courts should be applied. The progressive bloc defends that the balanced presence of both sexes must be imposed in each presidency, room or audience where seats are filled; while the conservatives see it as sufficient to achieve parity in the set of appointments made during the mandate.
In this scenario, the sources consulted predict “complex” negotiations that they hope can be kept apart from the friction between both sectors that has already emerged in some plenary sessions. Last Wednesday, the conservatives tried to open a debate during the question and answer session on the PSOE bill that aims to limit popular action and ask that the CGPJ make a report on the matter despite the fact that the law does not requires it.
The proposal outraged progressives, who described it as “disloyal” to try to debate an issue that was not on the agenda. And, furthermore, doing so just after the conservative APM – to which the majority of conservative members belong – had raised its criticism of this reform to the European Commission.
Reform on the election system
What it is taken for granted that there will be no agreement is in the report on the system of election of members that Parliament requested. That was one of the points of the pact reached in June of last year by the PSOE and the PP for the renewal of the body. The agreement obliged the new members to make a “reform proposal” of the system of election of the 12 member judges within a period of six months, which expires on February 6, in just three weeks.
On September 25, the plenary session constituted a working group with two conservative members and two progressive members. Their documentation and analysis work has already been completed, but members of both sensitivities assume that the document that will be sent to the Cortes will include two differentiated proposals: one aimed at maintaining the essence of the current model, in which Parliament chooses on a closed list determined by judges, defended by the progressive sector; and another that supports that the judicial members be elected directly by the judges, which is the one maintained by the councilors elected at the proposal of the PP.
This week a report from the Government Chamber of the Supreme Court has also emerged that admits the “divergence of points of view” in relation to this matter and proposes two alternatives. On the one hand, it alludes to the model defended by “broad sectors of the judicial career, including the majority of judicial associations” and which assumes that judges directly elect their colleagues. Although, it admits that mechanisms could be included to reflect “pluralism”, such as a system of open lists or the inclusion of “proportionality criteria” that would allow considering the proportion by sex, by categories and even the representation of all associations and of non-members.
The direct election by the members of the judiciary themselves and without the intervention of Parliament of the 12 members from the judicial career is defended by three of the four judicial associations. It is the model that governs the elections to the governing chambers of the Supreme Court, the National Court and the 17 autonomous superior courts, where there is total dominance of the judicial associations that cover the space of the right and the center-right.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court report does not directly oppose the parliamentary election. However, it opens the door to reducing to 24 – from the current 36 – the number of candidates pre-selected by the judges on whom Parliament decides. And it proposes that at least eight of the 12 judicial members to be appointed by Parliament have the endorsement of the Cortes “without any margin for discretion”, so that parliamentarians limit themselves to verifying their suitability.
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