The Supreme Court will ask the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) about how to apply the ruling from two weeks ago in which it estimates that “non-permanent permanent” personnel should become permanent. The importance of the actual application of the ruling derives from the existence of “multiple pending appeals” regarding non-permanent permanent personnel and some that have already been resolved.
“Given the existence of significant doubts about its scope in certain aspects, the Chamber has agreed to initiate proceedings in order to formulate a preliminary ruling before the Court of Justice of the European Union,” the Supreme Court explained in a statement this Thursday. The main doubts are how to make the ruling compatible “with the rules relating to access to public employment, as well as with the rules of the national legal system that guarantee the right of access to public employment in accordance with the principles of equality, merit and capacity.”
Spanish law provides for a merit-based competition to gain access to a civil servant position. On the other hand, some lawyers believe that the ruling allows the transformation into permanent employment of all public employees who are victims of abuse. Furthermore, they consider that the ruling rules out previous solutions such as conversion into a non-fixed permanent contract, compensation upon termination of the contract or the call for stabilization processes. If that is the correct interpretation, temporary public workers who have not been able to be converted to permanent positions and have been laid off could be reinstated.
On the other hand, UGT and the rest of the large unions consider that the ruling does not affect interim workers (those who occupy a temporary position as an official), but only the workforce.
Precisely, the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Public Service itself, headed by José Luis Escrivá, after hearing the ruling considered that it addressed specific cases and what the CJEU did was transfer the final decisions in this regard to the Spanish courts. The ministry has always been in favor of waiting to see how the magistrates interpreted the European ruling.
In recent days, the sentences that already apply European doctrine have increased, such as that of a court in Ourense that has declared inadmissible the dismissal of an interim worker for more than ten years in the Xunta de Galicia.