The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has received with some hope, but with caution, the agreement reached between the president of the central government, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to start negotiations for the renewal of the body of judges, in office for five years, given the deadlock maintained between the two parties.
Sources from both the conservative and progressive bloc believe that the intermediation of the European Commission can be a good solution to renew the twenty members and start a negotiation to reform the law that regulates the body so that in the future it will be the judges who elect the members and to remove power from Parliament.
The PSOE has never looked favorably on reforming the law before the renewal, since they believe that the Council would be left without real representation of society because it is understood that in the judicial career there is still a large weight of judges considered conservative. However, the President of the Executive and leader of the Socialists has accepted the proposal to appoint a European mediator or verifier to help unblock the situation.
From the conservative bloc of the body, they consider that the option for the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, to be the intermediary between the two parties would be the best solution. He has rushed several times to first renew the body and then reform the law.
Since assuming the presidency of the PP, Núñez Feijóo has maintained his disagreement with the renewal of the Judiciary if there was no prior reform of the law. Socialist sources, however, remember that Esteban González Pons, on behalf of the PP, closed with Félix Bolaños, as representative of the PSOE, the list of twenty members for the CGPJ. In any case, they believe that the pressure from the most ultra part of the party, in which they place the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, together with the media, caused the agreement that had already been closed to be broken. For their part, the PP now sees this solution as a “sale of opportunity” to unblock the “anguish” situation.
The Council’s progressive bloc sees the European Commission’s mediation option as a point of “concord”. In this way, Brussels will help Spain recover the credit of the institutions and mainly of the justice system, so insulted as a result of this blockade maintained since December 2018 and which is affecting the image of the politicization of justice.
From the judicial associations, they consider it an opportunity, but they maintain a certain suspicion. From the Francisco de Vitoria Judicial Association, its spokesman, Sergio Oliva, believes that “it means taking a step forward in the attempt to correct this democratic anomaly, which has lasted for more than five years”. Nevertheless, he insists that it is a priority to reform the organic law of the Judiciary “so that it allows the judicial career to elect the twelve members in accordance with a representative system that guarantees the plurality of the judicial career”, he stressed after learning the result of the meeting between Sánchez and Núñez Feijóo.
In recent weeks, the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños, has started a round of contacts with representatives of the judiciary. The first meeting was held precisely with the acting president of the CGPJ, Vicente Guilarte, who showed a willingness to build bridges and collaborate in whatever way he could to achieve the renewal of the body as soon as possible, in a very difficult situation delicate since the president, Carlos Lesmes, resigned last year.
