Pedro Sánchez plans to summon Alberto Núñez Feijóo to the Moncloa palace, for the first time in this new mandate, to try to unblock the renewal of a General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) that has already accumulated five years and one day with its mandate expired . “It will be soon,” the Government spokesperson, the socialist Pilar Alegría, confirmed this Tuesday about this first contact between the head of the Executive and the leader of the Popular Party.
But, previously, the Government trusts that the “pressure” of the European Commission on Feijóo will have an effect. “The PP has to digest what Reynders has said,” they say in Moncloa, after, the day before, the European Commissioner for Justice, the Belgian Didier Reynders, was, in the words of Alegría, “clear, forceful and exhaustive.” . “The Government’s position is the same as that of the European Commission,” the minister spokesperson celebrated. And this shared position is that, first of all, we must renew the governing body of judges in Spain. “And then we can talk,” she assured, about the reform of the organic law of the Judiciary that the PP demands.
“Renewing the CGPJ is not an option, it is a legal obligation,” Alegría warned. And he has closed the door to the PP’s latest proposal, provoked by Reynders’ words, to undertake the renewal of this constitutional body at the same time as the legislative reform is launched. “There is no room to interpret what Reynders said, it is not simultaneous, the first thing is to renew the Judicial Power,” they insist in Moncloa. “And the PP has no margin, it is in a dead end and it no longer has any excuse left to continue blocking the CGPJ,” they allege.
In the Executive, therefore, they are now waiting to see “what the attitude” of Feijóo is, and if there is a change in his strategy after the demand expressed by Reynders to address without delay the renewal of the governing body of the judges, before to undertake a debate on a reform of the law that changes the current system of appointment of CGPJ members by Parliament.
“The PP has mounted a crusade in Europe, and the setback has been monumental,” they warn at Moncloa. In this sense, the Government spokesperson has called on the PP not to continue raising “its frustrations” to the European institutions. “They already have a large portfolio of defeats,” highlighted Pilar Alegría, after listing the unsuccessful attempts by Feijóo’s party to dynamit Sánchez’s positions in Europe regarding initiatives such as the European recovery funds, the Iberian solution for the increase in prices. of energy – “the Iberian scam”, the PP disqualified it – or the pension reform.
If Feijóo now heeds Reynders’ express instructions, they reach an agreement at Moncloa, and the PP leader shows the political will to address the renewal of the CGPJ, “without further excuses”, the agreement could become a reality immediately. But, they insist, first the PP has to “digest” Reynders’ words.