Lesmes announces that he will resign this Monday due to the lack of progress in the renewal of the CGPJ

The president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and of the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmeshas announced that this Monday he will present his resignation, given the inability of the two major parties, PSOE and PP, to renew this body, which is about to serve four years in office, and the lack of return of its capacity to make appointments, while it is in office, not only for the Constitutional Court.

The resignation of Lesmes, who has at least managed to get Moncloa to announce a meeting this Monday with the opposition leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, poses a unprecedented institutional crisis in the Judiciary. To the lack of renewal of the Council, with the consequent impossibility of covering the vacancies that are generated in the Supreme Court, his replacement will be added, because the option that he has proposed of being replaced by the president of the First Chamber of the high court, Francisco Marin Castanbeing the oldest, does not convince all members.

And all this in a scenario in which a hard core of councilors appointed at the proposal of the PP keeps blocked any option of appointing the two magistrates of the TC that correspond to the CGPJ. From the outset, Lesmes made his resignation conditional on leaving that renewal “on track”, but the pressure from conservative sectors of the Supreme and the Council itself became stronger every time so that it kept its word.

not be an accomplice

Lesmes’ decision has been made public in a video, in which he says that the rapprochements between the Government and the opposition have not borne fruit and that he does not want “become an accomplice in a situation” which says “deplore”. He will return to the Supreme Court by helping to minimally alleviate the serious situation he is going through.

To the precarious situation of the governing body of the judges –limited in its functions after the latest legal reforms – has been added the division between blocks has made the other renewal fail, that of the Constitutional Court, which must replace four of its magistrates because their mandates expired on June 12. Two of them must be designated by the members of the CGPJ, who should have reached a consensus to choose the names before last September 13 in compliance with a recent legal reform.

The vitiated atmosphere that the lack of political agreement has transferred to the Council has prevented agreement, placing the president in a difficult situation. Lesmes expressed his willingness to leave the organ once the members completed their legal assignmentsomething that has been impossible so far and that seemed to be delayed at least until next Thursday, the 13th, having called a new plenary session to proceed to appoint the TC magistrates by then.

previous plenary session

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The resignation, which will be effective once the corresponding royal decree is published in the Official State Gazette, occurs once this Sunday the term that Lesmes himself announced to the members of the Council in the plenary meeting on September 29, without any of the conditions that could prevent it: that there had been some rapprochement between the PP and PSOE or that the appointment functions had been returned to the CGPJ.

Lesmes has announced that he has decided to cease immediately in the functions that legally correspond to him at the head of the Judiciary in a video, in which he explains that after the call he made during the judicial year opening speech to the President of the Government and the leader of the opposition so that they put a definitive solution to the untenable situation in which the Supreme Court and the CGPJ find themselves and of the exhortations in the same sense made by the Justice Commissioner of the European Union, Didier Reynders, who visited Spain last week, “the contacts developed in recent days”, of which he has been informed, have not given any positive result.