The failed reform of the Judiciary law stopped at the last minute by Pedro Sánchez in 2020 will be on the table again if a progressive coalition headed by the PSOE is formed.
The measure that is on the priority agenda of a possible new government pursues two objectives: to get the judiciary out of the current situation of blockade in the conviction that the PP will not give in and will maintain their posts, which have expired for for almost five years now, to the conservative members, and secondly, to give a new incentive to the nationalist and pro-independence groups to get their support.
According to parliamentary sources, the Socialists are considering the possibility of rescuing the text that was intended to change the majorities to appoint the members of the Judiciary.
This reform, on the one hand, would facilitate the renewal of the governing body of judges, which has been in office since December 2018, and, on the other hand, would allow the entry of a member appointed by Junts and ERC to be negotiated.
With this maneuver, the PSOE would lose power within the Council since what had been agreed with the PP -until the negotiations with Pablo Casado broke off and they have not been resumed with Alberto Núñez Feijóo- was to distribute the members in half (propose 10 for each game).
These weeks after the general elections on July 23, various proposals will be discussed to test the different groups. One of the trump cards is this reform, although as these parliamentary sources explain, there is “a long way to go”, so there is still time to finalize the final proposal.
The plan that is currently being considered is the possibility of rescuing the reform that United Podemos proposed at the time so that if in a first vote the three-fifths majority of Congress (210 deputies) necessary to elect the twenty members is not reached of the CGPJ, the renewal could be carried out with an absolute majority (176 deputies) 48 hours after the first vote.
In this way, the functioning of the governing body of judges could be guaranteed with the twelve members elected by Congress and the Senate, although the remaining eight designated among lawyers and jurists, for whose election the Constitution provides for a majority, could not have been renewed. reinforced. This proposal was presented in October 2020, although Sánchez finally decided to withdraw it after Europe warned that the text presented could "violate" the anti-corruption standards "set by the Group of States against Corruption of the Council of Europe (Greco).
At that time, with Casado still as leader of the popular, Sánchez announced that he was "stopping the clock" to try to negotiate the renewal of the Judiciary with the main opposition party. The body had expired for two years due to the refusal of the PP to reach an agreement with the Socialists under various pretexts.
A year later, in another joint proposal by Unidas Podemos and PSOE, both formations carried out a partial reform to prevent the Council from continuing to appoint magistrates to the high courts while it was in office, in an attempt to force the PP to renew a body dominated by a conservative majority. However, not even the arrival of Alberto Núñez Feijóo made it possible to sign an agreement despite the fact that the names of the members had already been agreed upon since 2019.
Sánchez himself in a letter sent to the leader of the PP on July 30 reminded him of the interruption of communication between the respective formations "abruptly and unilaterally with the rupture of the preliminary agreement for the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, a constitutional body of special relevance in our institutional system, which has been pending for more than four years”.
The “clock” that stopped three years ago is now moving again with two objectives: to renew the CGPJ and seek support for Sánchez to be re-elected Prime Minister. In this regard, both parliamentary and judiciary sources assume that with the current parliamentary arithmetic, the renewal of the body of judges is unfeasible, which will lengthen the situation "sine die" if no measure is taken.
Given the possibility of winning the elections and being able to be elected the new president of the government, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has remained firm throughout this time in his refusal to agree, alleging that before the renewal the law should be reformed so that they are the judges and not the chambers who choose the twelve members from the judicial career.
Europe defends this reform – which Vox also supports – to strengthen judicial independence, although on several occasions it has reiterated that first renewal and then reform.
