Justice suffers a colossal deterioration in Spain as a result of the blockade imposed by the PP in the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). A 2021 legal reform prohibits this body, made up of judges and jurists of recognized prestige, from appointing judicial posts —Supreme Court magistrates, presidents of hearings or higher courts— as vacancies occur in the different bodies due to the end of their terms of office. , retirements or deaths. This limitation already affects a hundred appointments, although the most serious situation occurs in the Supreme Court, where 21 of the 79 magistrates of this court have not been able to be replaced after retiring, which affects the normal functioning of some of the rooms most affected by the losses.
The legal prohibition to make appointments when the mandate of the General Council of the Judiciary is finished was an idea of the Government (PSOE and Unidas Podemos) to force the PP to carry out the renewal. But the measure, urgently approved by the Congress of Deputies through a bill, did not have the expected effects. The blockade for the renewal continues while the problem of the lack of magistrates in the Supreme Court due to the impossibility of appointing judicial posts has worsened over time.
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The Constitutional Court plans to vote in September on the paper prepared by magistrate María Luisa Balaguer, who proposes rejecting the appeal of the parliamentary right (PP and Vox) and endorsing the constitutionality of the legal reform approved in March 2021. If the paper comes out From now on, the constitutional possibility of prohibiting the appointment of judicial posts will always be established if the CGPJ, as has been the case since the end of 2018, has its mandate expired.
The text of that presentation, according to EL PAÍS sources familiar with it, supports the rule that prohibits appointments and proposes rejecting the appeals of the parliamentary right. The only constitutional objection to the legal reform of 2021 affected the appointment of Constitutional magistrates by the CGPJ, which were also prohibited. But at the end of 2022, a modification of the rule was approved that saved appointments to the Constitutional Court from the veto, which allowed this body to be renewed with the appointment of two magistrates by the General Council of the Judiciary, although with a few months of waiting. delay.
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The future Constitutional endorsement of the current legal prohibition would make a renewal of the Judiciary even more necessary, which the PP has refused for five years, despite the fact that both its previous leader, Pablo Casado, and the current one, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, They threatened the possibility of reaching an agreement for the appointments, although they later rectified alleging alleged breaches by the Executive. To break the negotiations and justify its refusal to renew the council, the PP came to brandish everything from insults to the King by one of the government’s partners to the penal reform of the crimes of sedition or embezzlement.
For their part, PSOE and Sumar have considered promoting a reform of the Judicial Power law that allows, in certain circumstances, to renew the CGPJ with an absolute majority, and not with the qualified majority of three fifths that is now required and that allows the PP block for as long as you want the changes that the Constitution imposes. But neither PSOE nor Sumar have ruled after the general elections of 23-J on whether they want to activate this parliamentary initiative, highly questioned in Brussels, when the new course begins after the constitution of the Cortes on August 17.
The composition of the General Council of the Judiciary has reflected since 1985 the ideological sensitivity present in the Parliament, so that, for example, when the PP won the elections by an absolute majority, as happened at the end of 2011, that same proportion was transferred to the Government of the judges. 11 of the 20 members elected by Congress and the Senate in 2013 were of a conservative tendency, endorsed by popular deputies and senators.
The renewal of the CGPJ should have been carried out in 2018, according to the times established in the Constitution. But that has not happened because the PP blocked the renewal and they maintain the 2013 composition in force, with an absolute majority of conservative members from whom the coalition government withdrew by law the power to appoint judicial posts in the different bodies.
The PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo promised in the last electoral campaign of 23-J to repeal the legal reform if it formed a Government to thus allow the General Council of the Judiciary, even with its mandate expired, to make the 21 appointments to the Supreme Court and thus end the blockage in this key body for the functioning of the administration of Justice.
The PP also planned to reform the law on the Judiciary so that the 12 judges that make up the CCGPJ would be directly elected by the judges, and not by Congress and the Senate, as is the case now. The Courts choose 12 vocal judges from a selection previously made by the judges themselves. In fact, there are about 40 judge candidates for the renewal of the current CGPJ who, in their day, obtained the necessary endorsements from their colleagues for the selection that the Chambers should have made and voted on.
The blockade in the renewal mainly affects the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the Supreme Court, greatly diminished by the retirement of a third of its magistrates. This situation means that each year 1,000 fewer sentences are handed down (25%) and, therefore, there is a considerable bottleneck in the resolution of conflicts between citizens and the public administration. Among the pending issues to be resolved by this room is the pardons granted by the Government to the pro-independence leaders of the Catalan process.
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