Israel is still listed as a free country in the latest annual report on the state of democracy in the world published recently by the organization Freedom House. The only one in the entire Middle East region. But this status – which it receives despite the deprivation of rights suffered by Palestinians in the occupied territories – is on the way to losing it if the operation to take over the judicial power, promoted by the far-right government coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, culminates . The outlook, according to the same report, could not be more “gloomy”. The same could be said of countries in the European Union, such as Hungary or Poland, where judicial independence is seriously compromised.
The independence of justice, the cornerstone of the rule of law and liberal democracy, based on the division of powers, is usually presented as an absolute concept. But in reality it is only a purpose, a purpose. There are those who will say that it is a chimera. In any case, it is not a principle that is guaranteed. Rather the opposite. Governments and political forces of all colors and everywhere try, in one way or another, to influence the Justice, sometimes with the militant complicity of sectors of the judiciary itself, for the benefit of their interests or their agenda. The malicious maneuvers surrounding the appointments of judges to the Supreme Court of the United States or the renewal of the General Council of the Judicial Power in Spain illustrate this type of practice.
The procedure for appointing judges and the government of the judiciary is bound to be subject to tension. There are those who defend with interest the exclusion of political power from the process and leave it exclusively in the hands of the judges themselves – the only ones who are not elected by the citizens –, as if this would remove the risk of political sectarianism. Something totally uncertain, as is obvious and obvious. There are even countries, such as France, where judges are a minority in the Superior Council of the Magistracy to avoid corporatist drifts. But the opposite extreme, the taking of absolute control of Justice by political power, without obstacles or counterweights, is the beginning of the end of democracy.
This is what is already happening in Hungary, where the prime minister, the ultra-nationalist Viktor Orbán, has used his overwhelming absolute majority to install an illiberal regime, where the only remaining trace of democracy – totally biased, d on the other hand – is the vote every four years (a method that the European Parliament has described as “electoral autocracy”). The Freedom House report, which considers Hungary only a “partially free” country, states that Orbán’s electoral victory in 2022 “was facilitated by his Government’s campaign since 2010 to systematically undermine the independence of the judiciary, opposition groups, the media and non-governmental organizations”.
The European Union has frozen the delivery of 6.3 billion euros of European funds to Budapest until it rectifies and restores the principles of the rule of law. The main measures demanded by Brussels refer to judicial independence – strengthening the protection of the Supreme Court against interference, limiting the role of the politicized Constitutional Court – and the fight against corruption.
Poland, which was Hungary’s long-time ally in the Visegrad Group – the two have drifted apart due to their divergent policies towards Russia – is not much better. The ultra-Catholic Law and Justice regime has also blocked 34,600 million from the European recovery plan until it corrects its judicial irregularities and applies the measures demanded of it – abolition of the disciplinary regime of the Supreme Court, guarantee of the independence of judges, compliance with European jurisdiction –, a matter in which they finally seem ready to give in.
This same authoritarian drift, corrected and increased, is what the Netanyahu Government -dominated by ultra-orthodox and far-right religious groups- is imposing on Israel, to the point of opening a very serious rift within Israeli society and causing a crisis capital letter In essence, the project of the Israeli prime minister – who also has a clear personal interest in dodging the corruption court cases hanging over him – seeks to increase government control over the selection of judges and bypass judicial review on political power, giving the legislative chamber the power to revoke the decisions of the Supreme Court. The reform, approved in first reading by the Parliament (Knesset), is nothing more than, in the words of the former Israeli Foreign Minister and former ambassador to Spain Shlomo Ben Ami, a “judicial coup”.
Street pressure – Israelis have been demonstrating in large numbers against the Government for weeks – and especially that exerted by the United States have led Netanyahu to soften the tone and advocate for a more consensual solution that avoids the division of Israeli society .
But in this same speech, delivered on Thursday, he also advanced that the processing of the reform will go ahead (while the Parliament approved a law to shield him in office before justice). If he ends up carrying out his plans, Israeli democracy will have begun to die.
