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The Constitutional seeks a pact between sectors before June for the ruling on abortion

2022-04-13T14:18:10.117Z


The court of guarantees has not resolved the PP's appeal against the law for 12 years Meeting of the plenary session of the magistrates of the Constitutional Court, chaired by Pedro González-Trevijano.KIKE PARA The Constitutional Court has imposed as an absolute priority the search for an internal pact that allows it to pass judgment on the appeal of the PP against the abortion law approved in 2010 to decriminalize the voluntary interruption of pregnancy during the first 14 weeks.


Meeting of the plenary session of the magistrates of the Constitutional Court, chaired by Pedro González-Trevijano.KIKE PARA

The Constitutional Court has imposed as an absolute priority the search for an internal pact that allows it to pass judgment on the appeal of the PP against the abortion law approved in 2010 to decriminalize the voluntary interruption of pregnancy during the first 14 weeks.

The president of the court, Pedro González-Trevijano, has promised the magistrates that a draft sentence be brought to the plenary session before June 12, the date on which the mandate of a third of the magistrates of the guarantee body theoretically ends.

After the recent interview between the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, magistrates of the court trust that this time the terms of its renewal will be met.

There is no specific date for the rapporteur of the appeal on the abortion law, magistrate Enrique Arnaldo, linked to the PP for his intervention as a speaker at multiple conferences organized by the FAES foundation, to present his draft resolution.

But until the first fortnight of June only three plenary sessions are planned, one after Easter and another two in May.

Therefore, it is most likely that the Constitutional Court will address the text that is submitted for discussion within a month at the latest.

The last renewal of the Constitutional Court took place in November, more than two years late, and from the first contacts to organize the new stage it was assumed that one of the resources that would have to be unblocked without further delay would be the one related to the challenge that the PP filed against the abortion law in 2010.

The rapporteur of the case has been working on this challenge since his appointment, and the court now intends —after having closed the long series of resolutions on the Catalan process— to try to assemble a clear majority to pass judgment on the oldest pending appeal.

To achieve this goal, a minimum understanding must be reached between the two sectors of the court, conservative and progressive, whose current balance is between six and five.

Court sources assure that no sentence will be approved if the text that is presented is supported only by the majority block, the conservative.

What is going to be tried is that the ruling that is handed down manages to gather in its favor at least eight or nine of the eleven votes of the plenary.

The entire composition of the Constitutional Court is made up of twelve magistrates, but one of them, Alfredo Montoya, from the conservative sector, is still in the process of recovering after the stroke he suffered in August.

It is not certain, however, that a consensus resolution will be easily reached.

The rapporteur, Judge Enrique Arnaldo, has not commented on the status of his work, and less on the content.

He has also not carried out previous polls on the opinion of the rest of the magistrates.

"He knows them and doesn't need them," say court sources.

Sources familiar with this process in the Constitutional Court assure that for the discussion to be channeled, it is necessary that there is an agreement to endorse the fundamentals of the current regulations, that is, the constitutionality of the law of terms.

The same sources rule out that the current conservative sector is going to use its majority to impose its criteria without dialogue.

Said majority, on the other hand, will change sign as soon as the court is renewed in June.

With its new composition there will be seven progressive magistrates and five conservatives.

This implies that if the appeal against the abortion law is not resolved during the mandate of the current court, this challenge will remain in the hands of a renewed Constitutionalist, and already with a progressive majority.

The next renewal of the court will be, in short, especially relevant.

From the outset, the president and vice president have to change.

To replace Pedro González Trevijano in the presidency, who has been exercising a leading role in the conservative majority, there are only two possible candidates, the progressives Cándido Conde-Pumpido and María Luisa Balaguer.

Both have three years left in their mandate, they belong to the group of magistrates that will be the next to leave the court, and the tradition assumed in the institution has always been that the new president is elected after each renewal among the components of that shift.

The same customs lead to the vice presidency remaining in the hands of the other sector, in this case the conservative.

And in that block there is only one name of magistrate with said profile in the group that is in the last third of the term, that of Ricardo Enríquez, who would therefore be the next vice president of the court, replacing the progressive Juan Antonio Xiol.

All this in a court in which, in parallel, the number of women will increase.

In this renewal, the Government has to appoint two members of the court and the General Council of the Judiciary another two.

In the court it is taken for granted that at least two new magistrates will be incorporated into the Constitutional Court.

If both come from the progressive sector, in principle, they will be votes won for the endorsement of the current abortion legislation.

What is also given as highly probable in the Constitutional is that important sentences will be left for the next term, such as those related to the educational reform of the Celáa law or the euthanasia law.

Regarding the first one, there was already a first draft before the last renewal, but there was no time to approve it, and later it has been verified that it would be difficult to resolve it by consensus.

Nobody wants to repeat in court the train crash that caused the sentences on the decrees of the state of alarm —in which important decisions, such as the general confinement of the population— were declared unconstitutional, so everything indicates that it is going to avoid in the last phase of this mandate any situation likely to generate new tensions.

Regarding the euthanasia law, there are no indications that there is a finished draft.

The rapporteur for this sentence is the progressive Ramón Sáez, in whose environment it was commented from the beginning that it would take several months to have a text prepared.

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Source: elparis

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