The Constitutional Court closes the course with numerous pending sentences and uncertainty about its renewal

Headquarters of the Constitutional Court, in Madrid.Álvaro García

The Constitutional Court has closed the course until next September with important sentences pending deliberation and great uncertainty about when and how it will be able to dictate them, waiting for its renewal to be unlocked.

This scenario is compatible, in any case, with the fact that in the court itself there is a generalized perception of the end of the stage.

The last jurisdictional plenary session should have taken place last Thursday the 19th, but it was suspended because both the president, Pedro González-Trevijano and the vice president, Juan Antonio Xiol, and the magistrate Enrique Arnaldo were affected by covid, a disease from which they have already recovered. .

The temporary cessation of court activities has left rulings as relevant as the one related to the abortion law in the drawer, whose draft sentence, prepared for months, has not been carried out in full so as not to reopen wounds in the Constitutional Court.

This is because the text that the current conservative majority would support would in no case be supported by the progressive minority, which would lead the court to a new episode of division and strong tensions.

The discrepancies derive from the fact that the ruling would endorse the law of terms, but would contain precautionary clauses such as the establishment of a reflection period for women who wanted to abort.

The requirement of parental authorization for minors under 18 years of age who had the same will to interrupt their pregnancy would also persist after the resolution, because this point was not appealed, since it came into force by virtue of a reform of the law approved by the Government of Mariano Rajoy (PP) in 2015. None of these measures has the support of the progressive magistrates, who prefer that the PP appeal be resolved when the court has been renewed and the internal balances have changed in favor of this sector, which would then have a majority of seven to five against the Conservatives.

The sensation of the end of the cycle translates into the fact that both sectors of the Constitutional Court share the desire that at the return of summer the provisions of the new law approved this July can be made effective so that the General Council of the Judiciary recovers its ability to appoint the two magistrates of the court of guarantees that corresponds to designate.

The Government, in turn, intends to appoint the other two magistrates who would complete this renewal in September, although the Council poses difficulties and does not agree on the appointments that are incumbent on it within the legally established period for it.

This period ends on September 13.

And the Senate will have to appoint a substitute for conservative magistrate Alfredo Montoya, who resigned from office on Wednesday for health reasons,

Both the magistrates of the progressive sector and those of the conservative bloc share the hope that the appointments of the Government and the Judiciary can be coordinated, knowing that if this were not the case, the Executive would proceed to fulfill its part, appointing two new members of the court .

If this situation is reached, and only the two magistrates promoted by the Executive are appointed, a new conflict would open in the Constitutional Court, since there are members of the two sectors of the court who consider that a partial renewal would be unconstitutional.

This could result in the Constitutional rejecting the new additions until they could be made together with those of the Council, in accordance with the constitutional provision that renewals must be carried out "by thirds".

That is, so that each of them implies the entry of four new magistrates, and not just two.

Regardless of the legal debate on this issue, both sectors of the court share the view that only the four planned changes —including those of president and vice president— will allow the Constitutional Court to recover its cruising speed as of September.

The pending renewal, in short, is considered in the guarantee body itself as the necessary budget for the court to be in a position to resolve without strong tensions the appeal that the PP filed against the abortion law more than 12 years ago, in June 2010.

Along with that appeal, some of the most important laws of the current legislature, contested by the PP and by Vox, are also awaiting a ruling.

These include the Euthanasia Law and the educational reform of the Celáa Law, as well as numerous decree laws approved during the mandate of the current coalition government.

The conservative majority of the court has already annulled some of such decrees on the grounds that they were not urgent —as required by law—, in the face of the Government's view that the measures they contained could not be postponed, for example in the face of the pandemic.

Important appeals are also pending in parliamentary matters, such as the one related to the loss of the seat by former Podemos deputy Alberto Rodríguez,

Under normal conditions, most of the matters pending judgment could have been resolved for many months, but the Constitutional Court has been postponing its decisions based on a double consideration.

On the one hand, he has wanted to avoid confrontations such as the one that caused the ruling that annulled the declaration of the state of alarm against the pandemic as unconstitutional, a year ago.

And on the other hand, the court has assumed that in the current situation, with a mandate completed since June 12, any resolution adopted on the most politically sensitive issues will be considered as a consequence of non-compliance with the constitutional provisions on pending renewal. .

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