The Constitutional Court will resolve next June two key issues of this legislature, the appeal against the ban on appointments by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) while it is in office, once its term has expired, and the loss of the seat by the former deputy of Podemos Alberto Rodríguez.
In the first case, the appeals were presented by the PP and Vox.
In the second, it was the former parliamentarian who went to the guarantee body to request protection.
Rodríguez considered that his fundamental rights were violated both by the Supreme Court ruling that sentenced him for kicking a police officer in a demonstration, and by the withdrawal of the seat by the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, as a consequence of the failed.
Both sentences will not be taken to the full Constitutional Court until the current process towards the municipal and regional elections on May 28 has finished.
According to sources from the guarantee court itself, it is considered highly unlikely that the sentence handed down will annul the legal reform to prevent appointments by the General Council of the Judiciary when it is in office.
The majority criterion that is making its way is that said reform must be endorsed, because its approval would not have entailed any constitutional transgression, to the extent that the legal change did not limit the powers of the Judiciary Council during its mandate, but rather during its term. extension, to remain in office indefinitely.
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Regarding the resources of former deputy Alberto Rodríguez, court sources believe that there is a high probability that he will be able to recover his seat.
The majority thesis would be at this point that there was a lack of proportionality between the sentence imposed on said former parliamentarian for a crime of attacking an agent of authority and the loss of the seat won in an election.
Said penalty was one month and fifteen days in prison, replaced by a fine of 540 euros.
Alberto Rodríguez appealed both the sentence that the Supreme Court handed down against him and the decision of the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, to leave him without a seat, as a result of the criminal conviction.
The Constitutional Court must first decide in which order to carry out the debate on both challenges.
The Constitutional Court has closed a particularly productive first quarter of work, in which it has been able to resolve some of the appeals that had been accumulated for years while waiting for the corresponding rulings to be handed down, without finding the ideal moment to do so.
This is the case, for example, of the challenge of the PP against the abortion law, presented in 2010. The court has already decided to endorse this law and the sentence being drafted by the vice president of the guarantee body, Inmaculada Montalbán, will be announced later. of Easter.
Along with this appeal, those presented by the PP and Vox against the euthanasia law and against the educational reform of the Celáa law have been resolved.
The court considers that once these steps have been taken, it can now open a relative parenthesis, in which it will not resolve matters with a great political charge.
The objective is not to interfere in any way in the pre-campaign and electoral campaign of 28-M.
But always with the clear purpose of once again addressing issues of special relevance as soon as this first date at the polls has passed, pending the general elections at the end of this year.
The cases of the reform so that the members of the CGPJ cannot appoint while in office and the seat of Rodríguez have great political and legal relevance.
Regarding the first, the Constitutional Court admitted the appeals of the PP and Vox for processing in September 2021. But until now it had avoided ruling on this legal reform, whose purpose was that the loss of this competence would make it easier for the PP and PSOE to resume negotiations to renew the governing body of judges.
The silence of the Constitutional Court on these challenges was due to a very conscious decision.
The court preferred not to act in the moments of greatest tension between the two majority parties regarding the norm, considering that such organizations should be the ones that would resolve the conflict that the election of the twenty members had become,
Last June, when the Constitutional Court also finished its mandate, to the blockade of the governing body of the judges was added the refusal of the conservative members of the Council of the Judiciary to meet the deadlines to negotiate the candidates to access the guarantee court.
There were rumors about supposed initiatives to probe the possibility of the Constitutional Court ruling on the prohibition of appointments, with the hope that it would end up considering that the aforementioned legal reform should have the case of the guarantee body as an exception.
But the magistrates remained firm in the decision not to issue any ruling to resolve the conflict, estimating that in this matter the greatest responsibility corresponded to the Cortes in general, and to the PP and PSOE in particular.
The situation is now different because after the renewal of the court -finally unlocked last December- the Constitutional Court has begun a stage of greater stability.
With its new composition, the guarantee body has a progressive majority of seven magistrates, four from the conservative sector.
In this new situation, the court is convinced that the internal tensions that occurred when the state of alarm decreed by the Government to deal with the pandemic was declared unconstitutional, or when the Constitution prevented Parliament will vote on two amendments aimed at facilitating the reform of the Penal Code that abolished the crime of sedition and modified that of embezzlement.
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