Didier Reynders(Liège, Wallonia, Belgium, 1958), graduated in Law and European Commissioner for Justice has been the de facto mediator in his capacity as European Commissioner for Justice of the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), the much talked about as depreciated “government of the judges” of Spain. Mediator because the Popular Party has repeatedly appealed to his good offices in recent years. A man with extensive experience in the European Parliament, Esteban González Pons, has forged a friendly and professional relationship with Reynders. All of these appeals have now led to the proposal of Reynders as “‘de jure mediator’, so to speak, or formal mediator/verifier.
One can get out of an ugly matter as best one can, Balzac is said to have written. The way to save ourselves from the shipwreck of the judicial ‘titanic’ caused by the PP (from Pablo Casado to Alberto Núñez Feijóo) is now, therefore, through an SOSa call for help, to Brussels, to the commissioner, not ship captain, of Justice, the everlasting minister of Belgian government administrations.
Feijóo’s plans
Feijóo already had the design of the titanic ready. He would maintain the blockade until he reached La Moncloa because in the general elections, scheduled for December 2023 or January 2024, he would obtain, according to the polls that the PP relied on, an absolute majority with Vox. In this case, it was about stretch the blockade on the renewal of the CGPJ until reaching Moncloa.
A judicial source with knowledge of Feijóo’s plans has explained it this way to EL PERIÓDICO.
“They were certain win the elections and achieve an absolute majority with Voxrepeal the 2021 law that limits the functions of the CGPJ that prohibits appointments by an acting body, a repeal that would be carried out without loss of time, make the current CGPJ with a conservative majority make the 80 pending appointments, fill the Supreme Court of the presidencies of the Superior Courts of Justice (TSJ) of the CCAA with conservative presidents and then make a reform law for the election of judges. But with the appointments made,” says the source.
Now both objectives are not feasible. Neither return the powers to the current Council, nor approve a modification of the organic law to establish a new system of electing members from the judges’ sector by the judges themselves directly. This is called a quagmire. Because? Because persisting in this blockade requires another four years (until the general elections) with this gibberish.
Because the same judges that Feijóo says he wants to represent have lost patience.
The blockade of the CGPJ
The CGPJ is in decompositionthe degree of aggressiveness of the conservative sector led by the lawyer José María Macíaspartner of the Cuatrecasas law firm, registers cracks, with an acting president, Vicente Guilarte, who distances himself in the most useless and partisan battles, and above all, because the judges want the appointments to be resumed.
“Many people have paralyzed their careers. The TSJ are chaired by people who are exhausted or who have retired; they are replaced by the oldest person without the capacity to do so, the same thing happens in the provincial courts. There are people with aspirations who have had long careers. standing out and cannot reach a presidency due to this five-year blockade. And in the Supreme Court, the same thing. Magistrates who are being fed up because there comes a time when they say “Hey, I’m going to have very little left.” to retire, it is no longer worth going to the Supreme Court.” Even the Professional Association of the Judiciary (APM) is pushing for the CGPJ to be renewed.”
Now Feijóo also wants to take the opportunity to name ‘his’ personal candidate to fill a vacancy in the constitutional Courtwhich was left in July 2022 by the magistrate elected by the Senate, at the initiative of the PP, Alfredo Montoyawhen he resigned for reasons of his health.
Feijóo has already appointed the contentious-administrative magistrate José Luis Costa Pillado (Cambados, 1954) as president of the Consultative Council in 2014 and the Galician Parliament formally proposed him on February 8, 2023, after a vote of 42 votes – majority of the PPdeG – in favor and 32 abstained with a blank vote to replace to Alfredo Montoya in the Constitutional Court.
But to get this appointment the absolute majority of the PP in the Senate is not enough because according to the Constitution a majority of 3/5 of the members is required. It therefore needs the support of the Socialist Party, a support that was already granted in the agreement between González Pons and the then Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, frustrated in October 2022.
The ruling of the ECtHR
The other argument now used by Feijóo as a lifeboat is that The PP would agree to renew the CGPJ for five years (term of the current law) “at the same time” as agreeing on a law to reform the current organic law for the system of appointment of members. This system comes from the reform of José María Aznar and the one introduced by Mariano Rajoy. Neither of the two, who had an absolute majority, modified the system when he was in a position to do so so that “the judges directly elect the twelve judges” who are part of the CGPJ.
Problem: there is a June 2023 ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) which upheld the appeal of six magistrates candidates for members of the Francisco de Vitoria association, whose names were sent to Congress to proceed with their selection.
According to the ECtHR, it has fundamental rights violated of the people who participated in the process if the initiated procedure is not completednot because they have a fundamental right to be elected, but because they have a fundamental right to have the process that began be completed.
The six candidates were entitled to the open selection procedure in the General cuts and this process, the ECtHR ruling states, “had to comply with certain criteria, which were of general application for the equal access to public functions or positions and the public function of Spanish law, such as the criteria of merit and capacity” and that the Constitutional Court itself has warned “specifically against the risks related to any partisan approach” by the dominant political groups.
“If you dispense with these six preselected candidates, the mess could be even greater because they could achieve the annulment of everything that is done through compliance with the Strasbourg ruling,” says a consulted magistrate.
Precisely: the TC dismissed without going into the merits the appeal presented by the members of the Francisco de Vitoria Association in 2021, filing the matter through an order in which the deadline to request protection was classified as expired.
In its June 2023 ruling, the ECtHR also dealt a blow to the TC by considering that He did not give any explanation for the rejection. and that there are no deadlines because the violation is permanent.
He Constitutional Court has created a commission that studies the execution of the ECtHR rulingan issue that will have to be resolved as a priority after the Christmas break, but which, according to legal sources, will not be distanced from the essential core of the Strasbourg ruling.
Now, why does Feijóo insist that it is “reasonable” to renew the CGPJ and “at the same time” approve a new law to elect judges? If the renewal of the CGPJ, as established by current law, is five years, the new system cannot be applied until this CGPJ exhausts its functions, that is, in five years.
From now on you will find out who is going to govern in Spain. The PPas has been pointed out, He didn’t do what he now promises in none of the governments with an absolute majority when the law could change.
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