The Popular Party threatens to break the deck and end the negotiations on the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). The new “transfers” of Pedro Sánchez to Junts will make the possibility of an agreement even more difficult, warned yesterday in Bucharest the deputy secretary of institutional action of the PP, Esteban González Pons, representative of the party in these conversations that, since February, have had the Commission as a referee.
“It is very difficult to reach an agreement on the CGPJ with someone who is at the same time humiliating, disavowing and forcing the Supreme Court to correct itself by breaking the division of powers,” said the PP representative on the sidelines of the congress that the European People's Party initiated. yesterday in Bucharest. Pons and the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, have an appointment in Strasbourg on Thursday, January 13, with the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, for the third meeting of the “structured dialogue” organized by Brussels to promote compliance with the recommendations of the EU's annual reports on the rule of law, but the popular leader left it up in the air as to whether the meeting will be held.
The European Commission accepted without much enthusiasm the role of arbiter of dialogue demanded by the PP, but set a two-month deadline for the exercise, which expires at the end of this month, coinciding with the departure of Reynders from the Community Executive; Ursula von der Leyen could ask another commissioner to extend the contacts, but it is not clear that she will do so. Brussels' recommendations to Spain's political parties consist of agreeing on the urgent renewal of the CGPJ and the start "immediately after" of the negotiations to reform the method of electing judges, and the agreement seems far away.
“No one understands that the Government humiliates the Supreme Court and that we give it the excuse of siding with the judges, when it is the judges' main enemy,” argued the PP representative, who called on the Government to “choose sides” and Decide if you are for or against your independence. The Sánchez Government – “weak” and “wormy”, he said – “cannot maintain the red lines in front of Junts or in front of anyone.”
Pons made this announcement shortly before the start of the EPP congress, called to elect its candidate to preside over the next European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and where the European PP condemned the amnesty negotiated by Sánchez. “We deplore the proposed Amnesty law, the political actions that have led to its adoption and its potential consequences for Europe,” states the resolution approved by the popular Europeans, among whom there are currently nine prime ministers of the Union.
González Pons was in charge of defending the adopted declaration before more than 2,000 EPP delegates. “We Spaniards need your help. "Europe cannot look the other way while a Government persecutes and points fingers at judges after having pardoned itself," he said in a speech in which he drew parallels with the Poland of the PiS governments and in which he called for a European mobilization similar to the that there was around Donald Tusk that allows the PP to regain power and “restore” the rule of law in Spain. The popular Poles “never turned their backs on Polish society and that is why they are back,” he said.
The resolution states that the Amnesty law “has been drafted by its own beneficiaries”, covers crimes such as “embezzlement of public funds and terrorism” and “could affect the closure of the investigation into Russian interference” in the Catalan independence process. . “As a party committed to the rule of law and European values, we cannot ignore actions that threaten fundamental legal principles and the separation of powers within the EU legal system. We demand firm scrutiny of the Amnesty law from the European Commission,” demands the EPP.
The Amnesty law was one of the issues addressed by Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Von der Leyen in the closed-door bilateral meeting they held before the start of the EPP congress in the Romanian capital. The leader of the PP has guaranteed his support for the German, who has run as a Popular European candidate to preside over the Commission for four more years, but with "two conditions." In addition to “correcting” her agricultural policy, they ask her to “continue defending the rule of law and making it one of the reasons why she is going to be re-elected,” Pons emphasized. The PP has made it clear in Bucharest that it expects a firmer attitude from Von der Leyen on this issue in the next term. To date, despite pressure from Genoa, it has maintained a distant attitude, and Brussels only plans to comment on the law in this regard once it is adopted.
