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The Constitutional Court has confirmed the prohibition on the Judiciary from making appointments while it is in office, by rejecting in its plenary session this Tuesday the appeal presented by the PP against said limitation of powers of the governing body of the judiciary.
The decision was made by 7 votes to 4 and coincided with the day before the start of negotiations between the Government and the PP to try to unblock the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, through a meeting in Brussels in which the European Commissioner of Justice, Didier Reynders, will act as mediator.
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The ruling approved today is the second on the prohibition of the Judiciary from making appointments once their mandate has ended, a measure approved by the PSOE in the previous legislature due to the lack of renewal of the governing body of the judges.
The first ruling issued in this matter was the one that resulted in the rejection of Vox's appeal, and it was issued on October 2, also by 7 votes to 4: those of the progressive sector and those of the conservative group, respectively.
In fact, the new resolution represents the reiteration of the doctrine of the previous one, which considered the limitation of powers of the governing body of judges to be in accordance with the Constitution while it is in office and awaiting renewal.
The resolution – of which Judge María Luisa Balaguer, from the progressive bloc of the court, has been the speaker – considers it fully constitutional that the law limits the powers of the Council when it has remained in office, given the “institutional anomaly” that its lack of renewal entails. , which corresponds to the Cortes and that the PP has been blocking for five years.
As already happened with the ruling that rejected Vox's appeal, the alternative text proposed by the magistrates of the conservative bloc considers that the limitation of functions of the governing body of judges represents a violation of the Constitution, because it restricts the powers of a body of the State and puts at risk the independence of the Judiciary.
The ruling that now endorses for the second time the prohibition of discretionary appointments - the regulated promotions of judges and magistrates by rank continue to be among the powers of the Council of the Judiciary in office - is based precisely on the anomaly represented by the lack of renewal of the Council .
In this sense, the text argues that "the acting General Council of the Judiciary must be able to develop the powers that constitutionally correspond to it, but subject to strict limits, which prevent this body, in a situation of extension due to the concurrence of a circumstance of institutional anomaly, compromises the future decision-making capacity of the government of the judiciary.”
The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has been in office for more than five years, during which various attempts at negotiation have been made, successively interrupted by the PP with changing arguments.
The situation is increasingly critical in various instances of justice, especially in the Supreme Court, where there are already 24 vacant positions, a third of the staff in the court that constitutes the top in all jurisdictional orders.
This February there will be a new retirement, with which the number of untenured positions will rise to 25 within a few weeks.
The situation has caused some of the chambers to be “on the verge of collapse,” as denounced by the president of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marín Castán, also the highest authority of the Civil Chamber, at the opening ceremony of the judicial year on September 7.
Marín Castán stated this in his speech before King Felipe VI, who presided over the solemn opening session.
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