Pedro Sánchez has summoned Alberto Núñez Feijóo to a meeting this Monday morning in Moncloa before the announcement of the resignation of the president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and of the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmes. The president’s claim is to demand that the main leader of the opposition agree to renew the governing body of the judges in the unprecedented situation in which he finds himself after almost four years with the mandate expired, but the PP leader maintains the demands that lead to persevere in the blockade that has led Lesmes to resign.
Sánchez will convey to Feijóo the need for him to unblock the renewal of the Judiciary and to comply, therefore, with the Constitution, according to government sources. “The situation is caused by the PP and it is very worrying,” these sources point out.
However, the starting points seem irreconcilable hours before the new meeting between Sánchez and Feijóo, who assures that he will attend the meeting “with the best disposition”, although he already anticipates that he maintains the conditions that lead to the blockade. The PP demands a change in the election system of the members that make up the Judiciary so that it is the judges who choose their governing body as opposed to the current model that has been in force for more than three decades and, according to which, the career court raises a series of names among which, subsequently, the Courts choose the ten members by a three-fifths majority.
I will meet with @sanchezcastejon tomorrow in La Moncloa. There has been my offer of an agreement since July to guarantee the independence of Justice as requested by the EU and, although I regret that the president of the Supreme Court had to resign, I will go with the best disposition.
– Alberto Núñez Feijoo (@NunezFeijoo) October 9, 2022
The Government rejects changing the election system and maintains that Brussels recommends a change in the system, despite the fact that there is already a previous proposal that comes out of the judiciary itself, but that has been demanding that the renewal take place immediately without waiting for some time. to modify the model. In any case, the Socialists reject that the judges are the ones who directly choose their governing body since the judicial career is mostly conservative and they defend that social representation is in the General Courts.
The appointment will be at 10:30 am, according to government sources. It will be the second meeting between Sánchez and Feijóo since the latter was elected leader of the PP last April. In this half year, the disagreement between the Government and the PP has been total. One of the main conflicts has been precisely in the lack of understanding for the renewal of the Judiciary and that has ended with the resignation of Lesmes, who will formalize his resignation this Monday when verifying the impossibility of an agreement between the two main parties to renew the institution whose mandate has expired for almost four years.
“With all hope of rectification lost and in the face of the patent deterioration of the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary, which I cannot avoid, my presence at the head of these institutions is no longer useful and would also be contrary to my own professional conscience, therefore that my resignation as president is imposed, since keeping me in this responsibility from now on can only serve to make me an accomplice in a situation that I abhor and that is unacceptable, ”says the magistrate in a statement.
