Government and PP meet and fail to unblock the renewal of the CGPJ

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  • Bolaños and Pons they meet unsuccessfully in Congress: Genoa demands that the express reform be withdrawn in order to appoint the judges of the TC and the Executive refuses

  • For Moncloa, “no more excuses are admissible to undertake the renewal of the CGPJ” now. Compliance with the Magna Carta “is not negotiated”

The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and the Deputy Secretary of Institutional Affairs of the PP, Esteban González Pons, met this Monday afternoon at the Congress of Deputies to address the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and the plan to regenerate Justice that the conservative party had presented in the morning. According to PP sources, the meeting ended “without any agreement“, and according to Moncloa, it was due to the “same will to block” the direction of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The popular demanded that the PSOE withdraw its decision to approve this Thursday the reform of the Organic Law of the Judicial Power to return powers to the CGPJ and to be able to appoint the members of the Constitutional Court whose mandate has expired. Bolaños, as the spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, announced hours before, refuses to do so. He does not see it as a sincere offer, but one last “excuse” for not renewing. And, for the Government, no more “excuses” are “admissible” for not undertaking the renewal of the CGPJ “immediately”. “Compliance with the Constitution not negotiated“, assured the spokeswoman in the morning and endorsed sources from Moncloa in the afternoon.

The two communiqués, the one from Genoa and the one from the Executive, were different in wording but equivalent in content, in the sequence of events. The popular ones presented their ‘Proposal for strengthen judicial independence and democratic quality in Spain’. According to the conservatives, this was the framework for a state pact between the two main parties. The PP requested a meeting and the Government agreed: Pons and Bolaños met in Congress at 7:30 p.m. and their meeting lasted 45 minutes. The conservative leader requested the withdrawal of the express reform that would guarantee the renewal of the TC. For the PP, the approval of this legal modification “does impossible reach agreements with the Government in the field of Justice”. It is, in his words, a “red line”.

For the PP, the reform is the “Bildu 2 law”: “They agree with Bildu to annul the memory of the victims and with ERC that it can enter the TC”

“The blockade that this decision leads to is due to the preferences of Pedro Sánchez, who prefers a Constitutional Court to the liking of the ERC, than a pact for Justice reached with the PP,” said sources from the PP leadership. The CGPJ has been more than three and a half years without being renewed between crossed accusations of Government and PP about who is responsible for such a breach of the Magna Carta.

the reform of the reform

The Government stresses that the Exclusive fault is Genoa and that his position expressed this Monday is, in reality, a step backwards. “Several of the proposals included in the PP document had already been agreed with the previous leadership of the PP in past negotiations, so a good part of the way would be advanced for the renewal of the CGPJ to take place without delay”, sentences the Moncloa statement, without specifying what proposals were already closed.

Moncloa alleges that Genoa’s position is a step backwards: several of the proposals in his text were “agreed” with Casado and he also approved the tenor of the bill that Feijóo asks to withdraw

Secondly, the Executive underlines that the bill that requires the withdrawal of the PP was “agreed” also with the leadership of Pablo Casado “in the framework of the renewal agreement of the TC, the Court of Auditors and the Ombudsman that was produced in October 2021”. “No more excuses are admissible on the part of the PP”, the Government points out with visible irritation: Genoa “must comply with the Constitution and the law and not to cause damage to democratic institutions and one of the powers of the State”.

The Congress will approve on Thursday by the urgent procedure that change of the Law of the Judicial Power that supposes, in fact, a reform of the reform. Sanchez decided last year to withdraw the CGPJ its ability to make appointments while its mandate has expired (with the aim of trying to pressure the PP) and now it has been found that, in order to ensure the renewal of the pending third of the Constitutional Court (two correspond to the CGPJ and two to the Government), you have to give him back that power.

According to the Executive, another ruse to delay the renewal. “Feijóo is not in a hurry to agree because he is delighted, like Casado, with the majority of the CGPJ, which is conservative because it responds to the parliamentary majority that existed at the time of Mariano Rajoy”, assures a senior PSOE official and they repeat in Moncloa . Casado’s team admitted that it is an issue “that does not bill the PP”. “No one in the bars is scandalized because the CGPJ has not been renewed,” said Teodoro García Egea, his number two. Now, Feijóo assures that he wants to renew it, but he also raises conditions. And that is what the Executive no longer tolerates, which accuses the Galician leadership of maintaining the “same will to blockade” as its predecessor and of plotting a “delaying maneuver to break into the debate on the state of the nation”, which begins this Tuesday in Congress.

In this way, the PSOE-PP dialogue bridges on this issue are blown up and it makes it almost impossible to take over in the governing body of the judges in this legislature.

Pons baptized this Monday the regulatory change as “Bildu Law 2”. “They agree with Bildu to annul the memory of the victims [en referencia a la ley de memoria democrática] and with ERC that ERC can enter the Constitutional Court”, declared Pons at a press conference after the party’s steering committee. Indeed, the PSOE hopes to carry out the vote on Thursday with the majority of the investiture, ERC included. The text will go to the Senate, so that the plenary can definitively validate it without changes next week.

Since then, there will no longer be dialogue bridges on this subject, as assumed in Moncloa. There will be no new negotiating attempts, in principle, so that the CGPJ could accumulate more than five years with the mandate expired, since the next general elections will be in December 2023. The magnitude of the blockade would be such that in the leader’s environment they believe that the PP will not be able to “stay so long in constitutional rebellionwill have to rectify at some point”. The truth is that the only window that was available before Thursday’s vote on the socialist bill closes. And it leaves one of the powers of the State another year and a half, probably, without renewing.

New system in six months

In the document presented this Monday by Pons, the PP states that he cannot be named state attorney general who has been in politics for the previous five years (and who can be challenged for that reason) and that the negotiation of the members of the CGPJ be carried out in Congress and the Senate, which is “what the law establishes.”

This was the third document delivered by Feijóo to the Government. For Moncloa, Genoa has “no will” to negotiate: the one who blocks “is one, the PP”

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Pons insisted that the initiatives that have been included have been discussed with the associations of judges and prosecutors. The conservatives also want the president of the CGPJ to be decided by the vowels and not by PSOE and PP. Feijóo also proposes that, within six months, the new Judiciary elected now (with the current law) propose to Congress a new model for the election of members for the future, “agreed between the judges and the judicial associations.”

This is the third document to agree that Feijóo presents to Sánchez in the three and a half months that he has been leader of the PP. He first presented a tax plan (with tax reduction), which the Government discredited for not considering it positive for the Spanish economy; later, he offered days before the NATO summit an agreement on Defense, which Moncloa also bordered, and now this document with measures to regenerate Justice. The popular leader wants to show that he is reaching out and that it is the Government that does not want to take it. “They want to distract. There is no will of any kind, none. Here there is only one that blocks, and it is the PP. They do not want to comply, and it has become clear,” they oppose in Sánchez’s circle.



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