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The collapse of the Supreme Court urges the renewal of the Judiciary

2022-04-09T03:45:30.209Z


The upcoming retirement of a judge brings vacancies to 14 in a staff of 80 magistrates The president of the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmes, together with the members of the Government Chamber during the opening ceremony of the judicial year last September. Emilio Naranjo (EFE) “Imagine that 20% of the seats remain vacant in the Congress of Deputies. Nothing else would be discussed." The reflection, pronounced by a magistrate of the Third Chamber (Contencioso-administrativo) of the Su


The president of the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmes, together with the members of the Government Chamber during the opening ceremony of the judicial year last September. Emilio Naranjo (EFE)

“Imagine that 20% of the seats remain vacant in the Congress of Deputies.

Nothing else would be discussed."

The reflection, pronounced by a magistrate of the Third Chamber (Contencioso-administrativo) of the Supreme Court, illustrates the feeling that has been shared for months by many members of the high court, where the blockade of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and the The legal reform that prevents the current Council from appointing discretionary positions has already left 13 vacancies out of the total of 80 positions that the high court has.

As of next Friday, when Segundo Menéndez, magistrate of the Third Chamber, retires, there will be 14, and if the vacancies are not filled before October, the casualties will rise to 16, which represents 20% of the workforce.

The commitment between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo to negotiate the renewal of the CGPJ has been received with optimism in the high court, although the June 12 horizon set by the Government to close the agreement leads the Supreme Court to resist in the current situation, at least until summer.

The "deadline", according to members of the court consulted, should be the opening of the judicial year, which is celebrated in September.

"Anything that is not having recovered normal functioning then will be an institutional contempt for the country's first jurisdictional body, and, with it, for one of the three pillars of the State," says a magistrate.

The negotiation between the PSOE and the PP is called to fulfill the constitutional obligation to renew the CGPJ, whose mandate expired in December 2018. But the law promoted by the Government to prevent the current Council from continuing to appoint the key positions of the magistracy has weighed down the functioning of the main judicial bodies, starting with the Supreme Court, where each judge who retires, dies or leaves voluntarily leaves a gap that cannot be filled until the CGPJ is renewed.

Among the magistrates there are divergent opinions about this legal reform (some question it and others consider it to be a "necessary evil" because the Council was no longer entitled to make appointments), but as the months go by without finding a way out, Everyone agrees on the seriousness of the situation.

The situation affects four of the five rooms, although the greatest precariousness is experienced in the Third, the one in charge of resolving, among others, the appeals against acts of the Government.

Starting next week, eight of its 33 seats will be vacant.

“There is almost a bleak aspect.

Ours is the floor with the empty offices.

There are already seven and now there will be eight.

It is sad to walk through the corridors”, describes a magistrate.

This room is organized into sections, depending on the matter dealt with (health, economy, environment) or the public body involved in the matter being resolved, and in some of them they could not reach the minimum of five magistrates required by law to deliberate a matter if no emergency measures had been taken.

The president of the chamber, César Tolosa, has been coming in for months to complete the sections when there are not enough magistrates, but this remedy has fallen short after the latest casualties, which has forced the chamber to be reorganized and to move magistrates from one section to another. other.

With these measures, each section now has just the minimum number of judges to deliberate.

“We live in an unstable balance”, affirms a magistrate, who explains that any additional casualties,

To the lack of hands implied by the empty chairs is added the increase in matters that have come to this room in recent months and those that remain to come related to the covid-19 pandemic.

The Third Chamber has been in charge of reviewing the resources against the limitations of fundamental rights decreed by the central and regional governments to combat the virus, and now, after the worst of the pandemic, is preparing to receive a barrage of property claims from businessmen to the State for the money they stopped earning during the state of alarm that ended up annulling the Constitutional Court.

The Supreme Court estimates that it will receive around 4,000 claims, which puts the room in charge of resolving them at risk of collapse, according to court sources.

The vacancies also seriously affect the operation of the Fourth (Social) room, which has three gaps to which at the end of the year, if the CGPJ has not been renewed, two other retirements will be added, including that of the president, María Luisa Segovian.

The staff of the room would be left with only eight magistrates —out of a total of 13—, so the two sections into which it is usually divided to deliberate and resolve matters could no longer be constituted.

“The casualties in the Supreme Court do not only affect those of us who form it.

They affect the citizens who await our resolution, the dismissed worker who has pending compensation, the employee who has been denied a right.

The lack of magistrates means that matters will take longer to resolve, ”recalls a member of this room.

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Source: elparis

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