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Moved by the conviction that the “handling” of the law at the whim of the Government is “intolerable”, the General Council of the Judiciary does not want to leave unanswered the new reform that the Executive has proposed through the Socialist Group in Congress to gain control of the Constitutional Court. How you do it is another question.
The bill that partially lifts the veto so that the Council can make only two appointments (those of the two magistrates of the TC that correspond to renew this body at the same time as the two proposed by the Government) it outrages most of the members and that is a reality that will be put on the table of the CGPJ in the plenary session scheduled for today.
The unknown is not so much whether the Council will give a response to this new interference in its functions, but in the number of supports and the terms in which that statement is expressed institutional, according to sources from the Council. And this because the fact that nine members of the conservative sector forced Lesmes to address this issue in plenary does not imply that those nine members are the ones who support the text they presented. If so, only one more vote (ten) would be needed for it to go ahead, since be part of a Council that will have two vacancies: that of the recently retired Rafael Fernández Valverde and very likely that of Victoria Cinto, who is on leave. The reality is that there are nuances in that text, which has two legs: on the one hand, the request that Congress be urged to listen to the governing body of the judges as directly affected by the reform. The second, that the new bill be brought to the attention of the European Commission that contradicts in part the reform that was proposed a year and a half ago and that keeps more than 60 appointments in the judicial leadership paralyzed, 14 of them in the Supreme Court.
It is precisely the introduction of this second point that can ‘decaffeinate’ the declaration that this Thursday comes out of the Plenary: some of the nine members of the conservative bloc who have forced the introduction of this text on the agenda for debate and vote they are not prepared to support any agreement that does not refer to the need to address the European Commission. And, in turn, some of the members who did not sign the letter and who are part of the progressive sector would be willing to support, together with at least six of the signatories, an institutional declaration in which the discomfort of the body is recorded and of the need to be given a hearing in this urgent procedure for which it is intended to approve the bill this same month of July that now begins.
organ fountains come Thus, the approval of a declaration that brings together the largest number of members possible and that individual concurring votes –not dissenting– could echo the need to have brought the facts to the attention of Europe.
Complaint outside of Spain
Regardless of the progressive and conservative profile of the members, there are members of the Council, including the president himself, Carlos Lesmes, who are not in favor of taking the colors of Spain outside our borders and who they prefer to leave the matter in the hands of judicial associations and political parties. “From a conceptual point of view, for a constitutional body to ‘denounce’ or complain about the Government before a European institution is very hard,” they say.
Those who in no case consider publicly denouncing the bill nor do they consider it necessary to report on it during its processing They are the five progressive members who also did not support the Council’s complaint during the previous procedure. This is the bloc headed by former socialist deputy Álvaro Cuesta, together with Clara Martínez de Careaga, Rafael Mozo, Pilar Sepúlveda and Concepción Sáez.
Soin today’s plenary session the position of the member appointed at the proposal of the PP will be key Vicente Guilarte, as well as those of Mar Cabrejas, Roser Bach and Enrique Lucas, who in weighty institutional declarations in defense of the independence of the Judiciary have aligned themselves with the conservative sector of the Council.
One of the most contradictory points of the reform of the Government – and of which the members want to put on record – is that the veto be lifted only to appoint the two magistrates of the TC and not on all discretionary appointmentswhen just two days ago the Supreme Court called the situation “unsustainable”.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism