The harsh setback for Europe that led to a PP-PSOE agreement in four days

MadridIt was on June 25th of last year when the PP and PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) announced the pact in Brussels to renew the General Council of the Judiciary, more than five and a half years after its mandate expired. The underlying reason why the two major Spanish parties found the dazzling figure unknown was unknown until this Wednesday: on the 21st of that same month, four days earlier, the Group of European States against Corruption (GRECO), which reports to the Council of Europe, had adopted a harsh report on the situation of the Spanish judiciary. "The situation is urgent. The stagnation of the CGPJ has resulted in a substantial delay in the appointment of senior officials in the judiciary throughout the country. This is, without a doubt, a worrying situation that requires swift and effective action," stated the text, now available.

"Spain has reported the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), a repeated demand from this body. This completes the only outstanding recommendation from this evaluation," the Ministry of the Presidency and Justice defends in a statement, coinciding with the publication of the GRECO report, which also warns of other recommendations. Some of these, the executive branch argues, are underway, such as the regulation of relations between parliamentarians and interest groups. In fact, a bill on lobbying is currently being processed in Congress.

Returning to the judicial sphere, GRECO has been warning Spain for years that it must make changes to the criteria for appointing senior officials in the Spanish judiciary to remove "any doubt about the independence, impartiality, and transparency of this process." Objective requirements regarding track record and merit already existed, but the discretion of the members when it came to appointing Supreme Court justices or presidents of the high courts of autonomous communities was high. With the unblocking of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), the creation of a qualification committee within the governing body of the judges was included to propose candidates "guaranteeing an objective assessment of the candidates based on their professional career," although the final decision depends on the political agreement between the conservative and progressive blocs.

Furthermore, GRECO stated that it was necessary to reform the system for electing members of the CGPJ from judicial backgrounds and that they be chosen by the members of the judiciary, without intervention from Congress and the Senate. The PP and PSOE agreed that the governing body of the judges would draft a proposal for changes to the model, although the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, already downplayed the possibility of implementing this modification from day one. Six months later, the CGPJ has presented two proposals: one from the conservative bloc, which advocates that the eight members from judicial backgrounds be elected solely by judges, and one from the progressive group, which supports maintaining a certain role for the Spanish Parliament.