The PP and the Government open the negotiation channel to renew the Judicial Power

The PP's deputy secretary of Economy, Juan Bravo, offers a press conference in Madrid after the meetings this Monday between the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the representatives of CEPYME, Gerardo Cuerva;

from CEOE, Antonio Garamendi;

from CCOO, Unai Sordo;

and from UGT, José María Álvarez. Kiko Huesca (EFE)

The PP officially opens a channel of negotiation with the Government to renew the General Council of the Judiciary, one of the main institutional anomalies that drags the country, with a mandate expired for more than three years.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has transmitted this afternoon by a message to Pedro Sánchez that Esteban González Pons, Institutional Deputy Secretary, will be his interlocutor for this matter, so from now on popular and Executive will sit down again to agree on the new members of the governing body of the judges, eight of whom the Constitution establishes that they be elected by a three-fifths majority of the Congress and the Senate.

The thaw is underway, but the relationship between the Government and the PP is still stuck in one of the main pending issues,

the decree of measures to alleviate the consequences of the war in Ukraine, which is voted on this Thursday.

The PP demands that La Moncloa open to negotiating its proposed economic plan with tax cuts if it wants its support for the decree, while the PSOE closes that door and labels its measures as "fiscal populism."

The PP insists that renewing the Judiciary is not its priority, but it is ready to negotiate after Sánchez asked Feijóo at the meeting they both held on April 8 in La Moncloa.

The popular ones face the process, in principle, with a willingness to agree and without red lines, because they do not define as a requirement - as Pablo Casado did - that the law be modified to change the method of electing the members and that they be chosen exclusively by the judges without the intervention of Parliament.

However, for an agreement of this magnitude to go ahead, relations still have to improve a lot: in Feijóo's team there is discomfort over the treatment they say they are receiving from the Government in the early stages of the Galician baron's leadership.

The popular summon the Executive to call them to sit down to negotiate before Thursday their possible support for the decree of anti-crisis measures for the war in Ukraine.

They want the progressive government to assume their plan, which contains a temporary tax cut that means 10,000 million euros less for the public coffers and that for the socialists is unaffordable.

The PP complains that the Government has not yet formally responded to the 41-page document that they sent to Moncloa with its economic proposal, and instead the response has been "silence or even contempt," Juan said this morning. Bravo, deputy secretary of economy of the popular, at a press conference after the steering committee of the PP.

Feijóo has appointed Bravo, Minister of Finance of the Andalusian Government,

as an interlocutor with the Government in economic matters, including for everything related to this Thursday's decree.

On behalf of the Executive, Félix Bolaños, Minister of the Presidency, will negotiate the Judiciary, and María Jesús Montero, Minister of Finance, the economic matter.

In the message that the Galician leader has sent to the Prime Minister this afternoon, Feijóo reminds him that the economic issue is "urgent" given the proximity of the vote on the decree, this Thursday.

The messages that the PSOE and the PP have exchanged this Monday do not invite optimism about the possibilities of agreement on the war decree, whose approval has been complicated for the Government by the scandal of the alleged espionage of independence leaders.

The spokesman for the socialist executive, Felipe Sicilia, criticized today that Feijóo "wants to look like [Emmanuel] Macron, but every day he looks more like [Marine] Le Pen" and has insisted that the plan of the popular is "populism fiscal".

For his part, the PP Deputy Secretary of Economy, Juan Bravo, has asked the Government to sit down to negotiate and "learn from the mistakes of (José Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero", "let themselves be helped for the benefit of the Spanish before be late” and “do not put Spain at risk again”.

The Judiciary will go down another lane, and in principle the starting positions are less far apart.

The one that begins now is the fourth attempt between the Government and the PP to renew the governing body of the judges since in 2018 the PSOE and the PP agreed to renew the Council with a progressive majority of members and chaired by Manuel Marchena, a judge of conservative trend.

That agreement, forged in the stage of Pablo Casado, was blown up by the resignation of Marchena once agreed.

The trigger was the leak of the message that Ignacio Cosidó, then spokesman for the PP in the Senate, sent to the popular senators justifying the agreement because that way the party would be able to "control the second chamber of the Supreme Court through the back door."

Since then,

The attempts have been made without an agreement being possible throughout Casado's term as head of the PP.

Now, Feijóo, who maintains that his intention is to recover institutional normality, opens the first contacts.

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