The General Council of the Spanish Judiciary (CGPJ), i.e. the guarantee body of the judiciary, He has decided yesterday afternoon, during an extraordinary plenary session, to elect the two judges of the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal of which up to now, with the support of the Popular Party (PP, the main centre-right party, currently in opposition of the government of the socialist Pedro Sánchez) had delayed the appointment. Thus a situation that had been stagnant since June, and which had caused a very serious institutional crisis, was unblocked. Now the Tribunal will have a progressive majority.
Until now, the balance of power within the CGPJ (with eight progressive and ten conservative members) had made an agreement very difficult. Finally, yesterday, the members of the CGPJ unanimously elected César Tolosa and María Luisa Segoviano in a second vote, judges who had both been proposed by the conservative wing of the guarantee body. However, the progressive wing voted for them, renouncing their own candidate. And he did, according to how much reported from the Spanish newspaper El País, for «institutional sense» and «exercise of responsibility». The compromise was however made possible by the fact that Toulouse is conservative in orientation, but is a moderate, and that Segoviano, while not the first choice of the progressive sector, is of progressive leanings and highly esteemed.
Thanks to this compromise, the CGPJ will in turn give the green light to the process that will allow the government to renew the orientation of the Constitutional Tribunal, the equivalent of our Constitutional Court, which will go from having a conservative majority (four judges) to ‘have a progressive majority (seven judges) thanks to new appointments from the government led by the Socialist Party. After the installation of the new Tribunal, the president will also have to be elected.
The renewal of the Constitutional Tribunal had been blocked since June, since the mandate of four judges, three of whom conservative in orientation, had ended: since then an agreement had not been found to renew the expired positions, which should have been done by mid of September. Of the four judges whose mandate had expired, in fact, two were to be appointed by the government, and two by the CGPJ. The government had appointed its judges on November 29, but the Tribunal had refused to allow them to take office without the CGPJ, whose majority is loyal to the Conservatives, choosing its own two, casting doubts on the legitimacy of a partial renewal .
Of the 20 members that make up the CGPJ, eight are by parliamentary appointment, and the government could have changed them to change the orientation of the Council: but it was necessary that three fifths of the parliament approved the new candidates in order to be able to renew them and it was therefore also necessary vote of the PP.
After months of negotiations and clashes, in recent weeks the Sánchez government had decided to force the situation and had presented a bill which provided that three-fifths of the parliament was no longer needed to appoint new members of the CGPJ (which in turn should have appointed the two new judges of the Tribunal) but that a simple majority was sufficient.
However, the reform had been merged by the government with other unrelated proposals, some of which would have benefited the Catalan independence activists accused of sedition and rebellion after the organization of the 2017 referendum. Building on this, the PP, opposed to any form of clemency and reconciliation with Catalan independence and opposed to the change of orientation of the Tribunal, had presented an appeal to the Tribunal itself against the proposal of the Socialists which, in the meantime, had been approved in the Chamber of Deputies. The text should have gone to the Senate for discussion and definitive approval, but the Court (with an unprecedented and much-contested decision) had accepted the PP’s appeal and effectively prevented the parliamentary process of the reform.
The government had then activated an alternative plan to present a new bill as soon as possible, but this time promoted by the parliamentary groups in order to be managed more quickly. Conservatives, both within the CGPJ and in the opposition, he wrote the newspaper The VanguardThey therefore knew that it would only be a matter of time before the government came to a solution and therefore facilitated a compromise on the appointments.
The government commented positively on the result of the CGPJ vote: «It is what we have been waiting for for months and what the law has been imposing since September. Despite the delay and blockage caused by the PP, today the CGPJ fulfilled its obligations, the law and the Constitution,” a press release said. And again: “The two magistrates appointed are, as has always happened with the appointments of the CGPJ, one of conservative sensitivity and the other of progressive sensitivity”.
The PP has in turn reacted to the appointments of the two new constitutional judges by making them look like a success for the conservative sector and a failure for the government. However, the government will now not need to resubmit a parliamentary initiative to reform the system of electing judges.
