Having made the negotiation breakthrough that will put an end to the five-year paralysis in Spain's judicial governance, the Socialists (PSOE) and the People's Party (PP) are now in a hurry to put into action what they have agreed on: the renewal of the twenty members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and a reform of the Spanish law governing judicial power. The Spanish Constitution stipulates that the months of July and August are months without parliamentary plenaries, but the two major parties do not want to waste time and have convened the 350 deputies of Congress in four sessions during the month of July to approve the law changes they have agreed on that will allow the renewal of the judicial governance organ. The final date will be Tuesday, July 23rd, when Congress can be expected to approve the ten new CGPJ members which are its own responsibility - and to send the amendment of the law of the judiciary to the upper house. Before that, Congress will also hold plenary sessions on Thursday 4th, Thursday 11th and Wednesday 17th; and in parallel, the Senate will have to establish its own calendar.
These parallel paths are due to the fact that conservatives and Socialists have made a double agreement: to renew the expired CGPJ and, at the same time, to reform the law to "reinforce the guarantees of independence" of judges and public prosecutors, so that the new members of the CGPJ design a new election system. In total, there will be twenty new members of the Council: ten approved by Congress and ten by the Senate (each chamber choosing six judges and four lawyers of recognized ability). Before being elected, lawyers must appear before the Committee for Appointments in both Congress and the Senate. This committee, made up of the speaker of the chamber and the spokespeople of the parliamentary groups, will issue a non-binding report on the suitability of the proposed names. This will take place in the first three weeks of July.
In relation to the proposed law, the PSOE and the PP have agreed that they will register the initiative together to present it in the lower house. From here, it will be processed with urgency, with all stages of its processing guaranteed by the majority formed by the two major parties who on most other issues are at loggerheads, but in this initiative have an unbeatable majority of 257 deputies out of 350. Urgent processing has, in fact, been agreed by the two so-called Parties of 1978 to the extent of "making the commitment" to "not process or support any amendment" to the proposal that "is not signed jointly". Therefore, the other parties will have no room for manoeuvre. The fumata bianca should thus emerge from Congress's metaphorical chimney on Tuesday, July 23th, and it will be off to the Senate, where PP-PSOE agreement will again expedite processing so that, although the Senate can take a maximum of 20 days, it is unlikely to need them.
PSOE and PP deal ends 5 years of expired judicial mandate
After five and a half years with an expired mandate, the two main Spanish parties agreed on Tuesday in Brussels that each will have ten members in the General Council of the Judiciary, whose names they have already agreed on. The two parties have also agreed that from now on decisions and appointments made by the CGPJ will require a strengthened three-fifths majority. In other words, once the law is reformed, the two judicial groupings, progressive and conservative, will have to convince members of the other 'side' each time they have to deliberate on an issue. The new members of the CGPJ will now have a special mission: they will receive the task of, within a period of six months, presenting a proposal on how the members of the judiciary should be chosen from now on.
Regarding the new law, the PSOE and the PP have agreed that a prosecutor general of the state cannot be chosen from anyone who has been a member of the Spanish government in the previous five years. Similarly, it has been agreed to eliminate the revolving doors between the judiciary and politics: any judges coming from a political position will have to wait two years to issue a ruling again. And they will never again be able to issue court rulings that have political content, affect a political party or a person active in politics. Finally, the two parties have also agreed to appoint a new judge to the Constitutional Court, filling a position left vacant by the departure for health reasons of judge Alfredo Montoya (chosen by the PP). The PP proposal is that this vacancy should be filled by José María Macías, currently a member of the CGPJ.
The signing of the agreement took place in Brussels, with the European Commission vice-president Věra Jourová acting as mediator in the last stage of the negotiation, after replacing commissioner Didier Reynders in this task. Around six months ago, the European Commission agreed to act as a mediator, after years of warning about the impact on Spanish democracy of the non-renewal of the CGPJ. In the press conference, after the signing, the PP's Esteban González Pons emphasized that the two years of negotiations with Félix Bolaños have marked "the start of a friendship", while the Spanish presidency and justice minister celebrated that this Tuesday it has been "proven that the most serious crises can be resolved through negotiation".