The call for a plenary session to assess the salary increase agreed between the Government and the associations of judges and prosecutors has led to a new, almost grotesque situation in the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which has been in office since December 2018. The The president of the body, the progressive Rafael Mozo, has called the session forced by the petition registered by five conservative members, who urged a full analysis of the salary agreement. The Council had scheduled an ordinary plenary session this Thursday, but Mozo was obliged to attend to the request of the members within 72 hours and has chosen to bring that session forward to Wednesday. After learning of the decision, the directors who demanded the extraordinary plenary session have asked that it be called off, alleging that the session had to be held before this Tuesday, when the Government and the associations plan to sign the salary agreement.
The CGPJ’s assessment of the Executive’s pact with judges and prosecutors is not going to have any practical repercussions, but like almost everything that happens in the Council it reveals the state of internal decomposition of a body that should have been renewed more than four years. The CGPJ has been represented by three members at the remuneration table in which the agreement has been debated and closed. The three, from the conservative sector (José Antonio Ballestero, Juan Martínez Moya and Gerardo Martínez Tristán) have been informing the rest of the body of the Government’s proposals, but they have not submitted the offer to a joint debate.
On Friday afternoon, 24 hours after the Government and the associations made the pact public, five members of the CGPJ asked the president to convene an extraordinary plenary session to assess the agreement. The petition, to which EL PAÍS has had access, urged to set it for this Monday, May 22. The request is signed by two of the members who have attended the remuneration table (Ballestero and Martínez Tristán) and three other directors: José María Macías, Carmen Llombart and Enrique Lucas. All but Lucas (proposed by the PNV) were proposed by the PP in 2013 to form part of the CGPJ and two of them (Ballestero and Llombart) belong to the Professional Association of the Magistracy (APM), which represents the most conservative wing. of the career and the only one of the seven associations of judges and prosecutors that has distanced itself from the salary increase agreement.
One of the signatories, asked by EL PAÍS, maintains that the remuneration agreement must receive the approval of the body before it is signed, and since the act of signing has been set for this Tuesday, the plenary session should have been held this Monday. On why the plenary session was not requested for last week, when the agreement was still being discussed and was susceptible to being modified, this counselor points out. “What we have to see is that what has been closed is correct; but we need the agreement closed because we are not part of it, we are observers. We cannot sit down and give an opinion on a proposal.”
The request to convene an extraordinary plenary session left President Mozo’s hands tied because the Organic Law of the Judiciary provides that the president must convene the session if five or more members request it in writing. The norm also dictates that this plenary session must be held “within the three days following” the presentation of the request and, although the signatories maintained that this term expired on Monday, Mozo has interpreted that the weekend is non-business and has set session for Wednesday.
Consulted members see in the petition of the five members a new example of the struggle that the conservative majority of the plenary maintains with the substitute president of the body, from the progressive sector. One of the members who signed the petition does not hide his anger with the president for having convened the plenary session for one day after the salary agreement is signed. “There is a maximum legal period to convene the plenary session that may end on Wednesday, but there is a sensible one that is to convene it when it makes sense. Calling him for the day after is an insult, ”he points out. The members who signed the plenary petition have signed another requesting that it be called off, but the president, for the moment, has not done so.
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closing ranks
After the institutional crisis generated by the election of the magistrates of the Constitutional Court, which precipitated the resignation of President Carlos Lesmes, an apparent closing of ranks took place around the figure of Mozo that has gradually been diluted. The climate, several members point out, has become rare as Lesmes’s substitute has tried to carry out his position with more autonomy than the conservative sector intended him to have. “There is tension and it is getting more and more,” says a progressive member. “The waiter should have been more proactive, he has not spoken during the weekend, despite everyone asking him if he was going to call. That has generated a lot of anger ”, warns this counselor.
The president alleges that after the decision to unite the extraordinary plenary session and the ordinary one in a single session, the intention is to avoid having to pay the members allowances for attending a session that would have little or no practical consequences. In the current CGPJ, due to a change in the model approved by the PP during the absolute majority of Mariano Rajoy and which has already been repealed for the next Council, only seven directors have exclusive dedication and receive full salary from the governing body of the judges. The rest maintain their usual dedication (judge or jurist) and receive a diet for attendance at plenary sessions (975 euros) or legal commissions (312 euros). Holding two plenary sessions in the same week would have doubled the expense for the CGPJ and the remuneration for the members.
