The PP presents another law to renew the Judiciary with measures of the agreement with the PSOE that Feijóo later broke

As El Mundo has advanced and this newspaper has confirmed by sources of the leadership of the PP in Congress, the parliamentary group presented an initiative in the Lower House on December 30 to recover the proposal that in recent years the formation has used as an excuse so as not to renew the Judiciary: let the judges be the ones who choose the judges. The PP already tried similar legislative initiatives in the past that were knocked down by the vast majority of the Chamber.

In addition, the text includes several of the measures that Feijóo and Pedro Sánchez agreed to this fall as part of the unsuccessful negotiation to unblock that body, such as that judges who enter politics cannot return to Justice until some time after leaving office or that the magistrates elected to the Supreme Court have at least 20 years of seniority in the judicial career.

Although from the environment of the PP they convey that what is embodied in the initiative includes what Esteban González Pons and the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, agreed to in the last negotiations, until now the only thing that had transpired from that agreement is what refers to the doors revolving, especially, that judges and magistrates who are appointed to positions of political or government election may not issue sentences in the two years after their dismissal.

The text establishes that the judges or magistrates who are elected to positions in the European Parliament, the Congress, the Senate, the autonomous assemblies or local corporations, or when they are appointed to a political position of trust above the director general, “may not re-enter the service up to two years after termination” and, if they request re-entry, “during the two years following their termination they will remain assigned to the CGPJ” to provide special service “of a governmental nature that the body assigns them”.

PSOE and PP also agreed in those meetings to demand a seniority of 20 years of “active service in the judicial career” to be appointed magistrate of the Supreme Court, for the 15 that are currently expected. The PP adds to this point a minimum seniority requirement of 15 years for magistrates who access the provincial courts and superior courts of justice and their chambers. On this aspect, it also includes something that it had negotiated with the PSOE: to reinforce the majority with which the presidents of those courts are elected, to go from a simple one to one of three fifths of the members of the Judiciary. This change would mean reversing the previous reform made by the PP with the absolute majority of Mariano Rajoy.

This change in majorities would also apply to the vice president of the CGPJ and the presidents of the National Court, as well as to the Supreme Court magistrate “competent to hear about the activities of the National Intelligence Center” and his substitute.

The deputy secretary of the PP Juan Bravo has commented this morning on the content of the proposal advanced by El Mundo and has acknowledged that it contemplates the measures that his party agreed with the PSOE. “President Feijóo was sitting with President Sánchez with that idea of ​​independence [de la Justicia]. It was a pact, a big agreement by the Justice, but Sánchez decided that repealing the crime of sedition was a pact that he could not renounce”, he said this Tuesday about that agreement that Feijóo broke after pressure from some media and of criticism of an eventual pact that the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, verbalized in those days.

The new proposal for a law of the conservative formation, however, focuses on something that, according to what has been published, was never agreed with the PSOE in those conversations. The PP proposes a new model for the election of the members of the General Council of the Judiciary so that the twelve seats that correspond exclusively to judges are elected by direct vote of their colleagues, who could vote for up to a maximum of six candidates on an open list.

The current regulation contemplates in its article 567 that the appointment of the members of the Judiciary corresponds to the Chambers. Congress and the Senate elect by a majority of three-fifths of their members ten members respectively: four “among jurists of recognized competence with more than fifth years of practice in their profession” and six “corresponding to the judicial shift”.

The initiative of the PP contemplates the modification of that article so that it establishes that “the twelve members of the turn of judicial origin will be chosen by and between judges and magistrates of all judicial categories that are in active service.” From there, it proposes some criteria: of those 12 members, “two will be magistrates of the Supreme Court, three with seniority of more than 25 years and seven without subject to seniority.” It also includes that those “eligible” may not have been “an elected position, member of the National Government or of the government councils of the Autonomous Communities”, nor “organic positions in a political party or union organization in the last five years”.

The PP also introduces changes in the requirements for the eight members that the Chambers choose from among jurists: those who are in a “different administrative situation” from that of active service for at least the previous four years may not be elected and, furthermore, if in the previous five years they have been “members of the National Government or of the government councils of the Autonomous Communities or holders of a Secretary of State”; “have held the status of deputy” in the European Parliament, in Congress, the Senate or in regional or municipal chambers or have been “an organic position in a political party or judicial organization”.

Congress struck down the two previous attempts

It is not the first proposal that the PP has brought to Congress to reform the system for electing judges. In recent years, Congress has knocked down two initiatives from the conservative formation for this purpose, the first time in 2018 and the second in 2021, both with Pablo Casado still at the helm of the party. The first was through an amendment that the PP and Ciudadanos presented together so that the judges could elect the vocal judges of the Judiciary, also shortly after other failed negotiations between the socialists and the popular to unblock the governing body of the judges. The result of that vote was 176 votes against to 164 in favor.

Those of Casado tried again in this legislature. In October 2020, they registered a proposal, this time in the form of a bill, to reform the election system of the constitutional body. A large majority rejected the proposal: 190 noes against 154 yeses. Together with the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox voted.

The PP presented its initiative again with the objective “that the judges and magistrates participate in the process of election of the members of the judicial shift directly.” They also proposed modifying the Organic Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to establish, among other reforms, the impediment that can be proposed for the appointment of the State Attorney General “to anyone who has held a political position or position of political trust in the previous ten years to his appointment.”

The PSOE: “Excuses and more excuses”

The Socialist Party has reacted to the new attempt by the popular to get a law to modify the functioning of the Judiciary. Sources from the formation led by Pedro Sánchez have reported that this is one more of the “excuses” that they include in their catalog for not renewing the governing body of judges, blocked for four years after a succession of various arguments such as the that Pablo Casado already proposed and his successor continues to maintain. From Ferraz they also remember that Brussels has repeatedly asked that, if there has to be a way, the composition of the CGPJ must first be renewed.

In a video posted on their networks, the formation has listed some of the excuses that the PP has made during these four years to oppose the renewal of the Council, as provided for in the Constitution. “There is no possible pact with those who ask for the king’s abdication,” said Casado; “That Podemos is not in the equation,” said former leader Pablo Montesinos; “The Government has an agreement with ERC to appoint magistrates,” Feijóo said later, according to that compilation that the PSOE has exposed.