Seville continues to be the headquarters of the European Space Agency and Granada is left without hosting the headquarters of the Artificial Intelligence Agency. This is stated in two rulings issued by the Supreme Court regarding the appeals presented against these appointments by Aragón, in the first case, and against Galicia in the second.
Thus, the High Court supports the decisions adopted by the Council of Ministers regarding the distribution of the entities, a commitment to decentralization promoted by the Government of Pedro Sánchez and which ended up pitting several regions against one another in a battle to host an agency.
Granada has not welcomed the ruling of the TS regarding the planned appeal against the decision for A Coruña to become the headquarters of the Artificial Intelligence Agency. It was the city council of the ‘red city’ that appealed to the courts against the Government’s decision, pointing out that, in its opinion, there had not been enough transparency regarding the scoring scales.
The High Court recalls that the order by which the report of the Advisory Commission for determining the headquarters of the AESIA is published establishes the criteria to be taken into consideration. It indicates that the fight against depopulation, unemployment levels, the network of access to public transportation and the university ecosystem related to artificial intelligence are valued, among other aspects, “but it does not establish any scale regarding the criteria.” “We are not facing a contest in which the seat is awarded to the candidate city that achieves the highest score” but rather “a motivated discretionary act of the Council of Ministers, which may or may not follow the recommendation made.”
In this sense, he adds that “even though it may be interesting to know the exact score of each applicant, it is irrelevant.” “The score achieved by the candidates from A Coruña, Alicante and Granada is unknown except that the three applicants of the 16 presented are the only ones who, after the individualized reports that appear in the file, were considered ‘excellent’,” indicates the court.
He adds that “the fact that in the report evaluating the Commission’s candidatures a certain order appears with Granada in first place has no effect on the recommendation of the city of A Coruña made by the commission to the Council of Ministers.” The ruling emphasizes that “the agreement of the Council of Ministers should not address the candidacy with the highest score but rather one of those classified as ‘excellent’.”
The Andalusian Government did not take long to react and point out that it was a “partisan” decision. The Minister of Development, Territorial Articulation and Housing, Rocío Díaz, has maintained that “the final choice” of the physical headquarters of the State Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (Aesia) was “not very transparent, arbitrary and partisan.”
Díaz has indicated that the Andalusian Government respects the decision of the TS, “but this Government does not agree with the fact that Granada has not been chosen as the headquarters of the Aesia.” As he explained, “the Government of Pedro Sánchez established selection criteria in which the Andalusian city was the best valued”, hence, as he said, “the final election was not very transparent, arbitrary and partisan.” “It was a political decision not subject to technical criteria,” added the Minister of Public Works.
The TS has considered that the selection criteria do not infringe the principles of territorial structuring and balance, as Aragón maintains regarding the decision for Seville to host the European Space Agency (ESA), which in its appeal alleged that certain requirements had been established. that excluded the candidacy of Teruel, which since 2021 had expressed its interest in the AEE headquarters.
The ruling, for which Judge José Luis Requero was the speaker, indicates that it is a system that the State Administration imposes on itself based on the principle of deconcentration, as set out in the royal decree, which it invokes as the inspiring criterion of the new regime. of determining headquarters, structuring and territorial balance.
The court notes a “basic error” in Aragón’s appeal “by maintaining” that the criteria respond to the principle of decentralization “since the system for determining headquarters responds to the principle of deconcentration.”
The Supreme Court refutes Aragón’s allegation that the criterion of “characteristics of the locality” refers to large cities because for the court “this in itself is not objectionable since it is the principle of effectiveness added to that of adequacy that requires infrastructure that compensate for the territorial deconcentration of the State Administration by establishing its headquarters outside the capital.”
The “characteristics of the locality” criterion referred to the requirement that it have a wide network of access to means of public transport by air, rail – especially high speed – and road.
In addition, a distance of less than an hour from the headquarters to an international airport with connections to Brussels and Paris, although Amsterdam, Rome, Frankfurt, Prague and Toulouse were also assessed, “destinations that are justified by being the ones that PREPA personnel will frequent.” “, to which is added a hotel ecosystem close to the headquarters. Aragón maintained that such criteria do not correct territorial imbalances.
Faced with this allegation, the Supreme Court clarifies that “one of the objectives of this policy of territorial deconcentration is to help correct these imbalances, but it is not a direct objective since we are not dealing with a measure specifically of territorial or social development in areas with high unemployment or depopulation”.
“This does not mean that it is not understood that territorial deconcentration will be a benefit for the locality in which the headquarters of the PREPA is established and it is appreciated that it contributes to those purposes,” he points out.
