The Constitutional Court has estimated by six votes against five the very precautionary measures requested by the PP and has stopped the parliamentary processing of its reform, according to confirmation to La Vanguardia sources from the court.
After almost five hours of debate, the guarantee body has decided to paralyze the process, which means that the vote in the Congress of Deputies is annulled and prevents the final vote from being taken to the Senate.
The conservative sector of the plenary session of the Constitutional Court (TC) has finally managed with its majority to assert its criteria without options to reach a consensus with the progressives. Previously, they had managed to avoid the challenges of the president, Pedro González-Trevijano and the magistrate Antonio Narváez and thus be able to discuss the very precautionary measures requested by the PP to stop the parliamentary process of the reform of the law that will change the system of election of the magistrates of the guarantee body promoted by the PSOE.
Unidas Podemos and the Socialists had presented two separate documents requesting their appearance in the matter and the recusal of these two magistrates, as they were directly affected by the reform. The two parties consider that they could be contaminated because if the reform goes ahead, the Government will be given the green light to make their appointments and both will have to leave their posts, which have expired since June.
However, there are two other magistrates who also have their mandate expired and must be renewed by the General Council of the Judiciary. If they were challenged, then the court would have been left without a quorum to debate, since the minimum for the composition of the court was eight magistrates.
After a debate of nearly three hours in the afternoon, the plenary session agreed by six votes in favor and five against to reject the challenges and admit the PP's appeal for processing. Once this decision was adopted, the magistrates began the debate on whether the very precautionary measures requested by the PP should be adopted to stop the processing of the reform.
The Constitutional Court (TC) today faced one of the highest tension plenary sessions in recent times. The PP believes that their rights are being violated due to the way in which the PSOE has decided to process the reform of the law to modify the system of election of the magistrates of the Constitutional Court and wants the guarantee body to paralyze its processing before its approval in the Senate on Thursday.
This claim has broken the Court in two, as will be seen in today's plenary session. For the decisions that have been adopted in this way by the difference of three or one vote. Yesterday the PSOE filed two appeals to stop the request of the PP.
The plenary session started at 10 in the morning with three clearly differentiated positions. Magistrates considered conservative are willing to agree to the very precautionary measures requested by the PP and prevent the reform from being voted on in the Senate this Thursday. If so, the processing would return to the beginning for the PSOE to present the amendments within a law related to the object of the modification.
The groups of the Government coalition, PSOE and UP, presented an amendment, included within the reform of the Penal Code, to modify the system of election of the members of the Constitutional. This is precisely what the PP questions, and court sources consider that the complaint is reasonable.
Its president, Pedro González-Trevijano, urgently met in plenary last Thursday to decide on this appeal, but finally postponed the decision until today, Monday, before the vote in the Senate, which will take place on Thursday.
In the morning session, the TC considered it good that it is the plenary session and not a room that studies the appeal presented by the PP. According to sources from the body, by seven votes to four it has been understood that the matter is sufficiently important to be reviewed by all the magistrates of the body and not just by a Chamber.
During this morning's session, the magistrates have entered into a debate on whether the appeal should be admitted for processing. After exposing their positions each one of them, in the afternoon they voted and by six votes in favor of the conservatives and five against the progressives their admission was decided.
According to the writings presented by the PSOE, the Socialists consider that if the PP's petition is admitted, the Constitutional Court "would violate the right of citizens to participate in public affairs through their representatives" and, in addition, it would "disturb" the functioning of the Cortes Generales.
Likewise, the Socialists allege that the filing of the amparo remedies without having exhausted the internal channels is cause of inadmissibility to proceeding with a prior character, "as determined" by the Constitutional Court itself.
