The members of the General Council of the Judiciary proposed by the PSOE-Sumar and the PP closed this Friday the composition of the five commissions with which they must begin to operate in a mandate that began on July 25 but that, in practice, still has not started. Meanwhile, the chambers of the Supreme Court, such as the Contentious-Administrative Chamber, are adopting emergency solutions such as doubling the presence of magistrates in the different sections and reducing the number of presentations due to the large number of vacancies that have not been filled since March 2021. .
The two sectors of the CGPJ have 15 days of trading commissionsIn addition to being the organs through which the work of the members is articulated and proposals are made to the plenary session, the commissions reflect the internal distribution of power within the governing body of the judiciary.
After several contradictory proposals, a change of negotiators in the progressive sector and agreements reached at the last moment, an agreement was reached for each group to present on Friday morning the names of the members who will make up both the commissions provided for in the Organic Law of the Judicial Power (LOPJ) and those provided for in the Regulation of the Council, as well as the territorial members.
Disagreements within the progressive group ultimately limited the pact to the legal commissions and territorial committees. The regulatory commissions were left for later.
The idea – if there are no new changes in the coming days – is to bring to the plenary session of the Council scheduled for next Wednesday the election of the vice-president of the Supreme Court, the territorial members and the composition of the Standing Commission, Qualification Commission, Disciplinary Commission, Economic Affairs Commission (CAE) and Equality Commission.
First plenary session of Perelló
These are the commissions provided for in the LOPJ, without which the Council cannot function. In fact, This Friday, an extraordinary plenary session was to be held.the first chaired by Isabel Perelló, to resolve urgent or non-postponable issues, including the call for elections to the government chambers of the courts on November 24.
The extraordinary plenary session was followed electronically by many members who were not in Madrid. Perelló spoke at the beginning to thank the councilors for their support in his election as president and asked them to show willingness to dialogue and reach consensus.
It was after the plenary session that it became known that the progressive sector would not propose names for the regulatory commissions. Progressive sources indicated that within them there are different views on the strategy to be followed and that some members want to stagger the composition of the commissions.
Thus, the Studies and Reports, Judicial School, International and Modernization committees will, in principle, be excluded from the agenda of Wednesday’s plenary session.
The first is very relevant because it will include an “annex” that will be in charge of the work related to the proposal that the CGPJ must make to reform the system of election of the 12 members from the judiciary.
The PSOE-PP agreement for the renewal of the governing body of the judiciary provided for the task of the new Council to make a proposal on this nuclear issue, for which it has six months. This deadline began on 6 August and the working group has not even been formed yet.
Legal Commissions
However, the plenary session is expected to approve the agreement reached to form the powerful Standing, Qualification, Discipline, CAE and Equality Commission.
The criterion adopted in the negotiations is that the sector that has the majority in a committee would leave the presidency of the committee to the other group. It has been particularly difficult to meet the legal requirement that committees must have three judicial members and two jurists, because the number of the latter in the conservative group is very low, only three.
In accordance with the agreement, the Standing Committee It will have four members proposed by the PP (Pilar Jiménez Bados, Isabel Revuelta, Eduardo Martínez Mediavilla and Alejandro Abascal) and three proposed by the PSOE (Esther Erice, Bernardo Fernández and Carlos Hugo Preciado). The president Isabel Perelló will preside with a casting vote.
THE Qualification Commissionin charge of nomination proposals for judicial positions, will have a progressive majority with members Argelia Queralt, Ricardo Bodas and Ángel Arozamena. It will be chaired by José Antonio Montero and will be integrated by Esther Rojo.
José María Fernández Seijo, from the progressive group, will chair the Disciplinary Commissionthe only one that does not rotate throughout the term. The members of their sector will be Lucía Avilés and Ricardo Bodas. The members proposed by the PP Pilar Jiménez Bados, José Luis Costa, Carlos Orga and José María Páez will have the majority.
These commissions will thus begin to operate 21 days after the entry of the president into the CGPJ, responsible for bringing the proposal to the plenary session.
Perelló, who took office on September 4, communicated on September 16 his proposal to appoint Dimitar Berberoff as vice-president of the Supreme Court and will bring the constitution of the legal commissions to the plenary session of the 25th.
These are much longer deadlines than those of their predecessors. For example, the president of the previous CGPJ, Carlos Lesmes, took office on December 11, 2013, proposed Ángel Juanes as vice-president of the TS in 24 hours and brought this nomination and the constitution of all the commissions to the plenary session of December 20, all unanimously. In nine days, the CGPJ was operational.
