The negotiation between the PP and the Government is complicated with the mediation of Brussels to unblock the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).
The positions are increasingly distant.
For now, the meeting scheduled this Wednesday in Madrid between Commissioner Didier Reynders - who has assumed the role of referee - with the Minister of Justice, Felix Bolaños and the leader of the PP Esteban González Pons, has been postponed.
The PP assures that it was due to the commissioner's agenda, the Executive does not go into details and the Belgian liberal maintains his commitment not to comment so as not to damage the negotiation and continues to push to set a date to advance the "constructive dialogue."
But the truth is that the postponement of the fourth meeting – the first in Madrid – was not due to a problem with the European representative's calendar.
And the postponement is a bad sign and another symptom that the positions are far away.
“The talks continue and the Commission remains available to collaborate with the parties,” says a spokesperson for the Community Executive.
European sources indicate that the PP and the Government need “more time” before meeting with Reynders, who in the last meeting, on March 13 in Strasbourg, assured that there was room for an agreement but clearly demanded “political will.”
The commissioner, furthermore, does not have unlimited time.
He is in the final shortlist to lead the Council of Europe – a body that is not part of the EU – and in the coming days or weeks he will take a leave of absence to focus on his campaign.
But the situation seems entrenched.
The PP has kept the renewal of judges' bodies paralyzed for five years and is also introducing another ingredient in the public conversation: the amnesty law, approved by Congress and pending debate in the Senate.
“It is very difficult to reach an agreement for the CGPJ with someone who at the same time is humiliating, disavowing and forcing the Supreme Court to correct itself, breaking the separation of powers,” González Pons noted at the beginning of March.
The Government assures that they have the will to continue with the talks.
The predisposition of the PSOE, says the Government party, is to meet and close an agreement as soon as possible with the PP for the renewal of the CGPJ, reports
José Marcos
.
Brussels had given two months, until the end of March, to the PP and the Government to reach an agreement with two key points: “Proceed as a priority to the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary and initiate, immediately after the renewal, a process with a view to adapting the appointment of its judge-members, taking into account the European standards on the Judicial Councils.”
Although there are no clear rules for the second guideline, there are no common European standards on the matter and the Member States are organized in different ways.
The European Commission is deeply concerned about the blockade of the CGPJ, which has been the main warning to Spain in the reports on the rule of law of the Community Executive for several years.
The lack of renewal of the governing body of all judges in Spain has caused significant damage to the Supreme Court: almost a third of its staff of judges (retired or deceased during this time) have not been able to be replaced.
This has resulted in 1,000 fewer sentences being handed down each year, according to the latest statistics from the CGPJ.
The Supreme Court is, in some of its rooms, in a situation on the verge of collapse.
Meanwhile, with the Madrid meeting postponed, the next meeting is up in the air.
“In any case, whether there is going to be a meeting or not, whenever it is, our will and our political position is what is already known,” said the PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, at a press conference at the party's headquarters in Madrid after the weekly meeting of the popular steering committee.
The PP insists on its proposal to renew the law on the election of members of the CPGJ while the governing body of the judges serves more than five years with the mandate that expired due to its resistance.
The Council is made up of 20 members: 12 judges and 8 jurists of recognized prestige.
They are all appointed by the Congress and the Senate by a three-fifths majority (which is why the agreement of the two main parties is necessary);
although, in the case of the 12 member judges, the Courts decide based on a list of candidates drawn up by the career judges themselves.
The PP defends, for future renewals, that the judges directly elect, without intervention from the Cortes, the 12 members of the council.
And it demands that the PSOE modify the rule “simultaneously” with the renewal of the body.
A position that they have insisted on in recent weeks while the Government, mainly through the mouth of the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, focuses on unblocking the judicial body of the judges.
“What the Commission says, which is the position of the Government of Spain, is that the General Council of the Judiciary must be urgently renewed,” Bolaños stated in this regard two weeks ago in an interview on TVE.
“And, immediately afterwards, begin a dialogue process to seek the best standards in relation to the Council's judges.
That is the position of the Government of Spain and the European Commission,” concluded the Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Justice, reports
Virginia Martínez.
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