A member of the CGPJ says that the independence of the Judiciary is not in danger but alert: The situation is "serious"

He says that he will respect the decision of the TC on the appeal of the PP to the reform of the Government to renew it

MADRID, 15 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) José Antonio Ballestero has rejected this Thursday that the independence of the Judiciary is in danger, since there are "sufficient springs" to guarantee it, but he believes that the situation is "serious".

Having said this, Ballestero has transferred his confidence in what the Constitutional Court (TC) decides, whatever the result, on the amparo appeal presented by the PP to paralyze the reform with which the Government seeks to renew the court of guarantees, and that affects how the two candidates who touch the CGPJ are chosen.

"The situation we are experiencing is undoubtedly serious and that is precisely why the Constitutional Court is meeting today. I fully trust the resolution that it is going to dictate, whatever its sign. It is the system and it is the rules", has affirmed who is one of the negotiators of the conservative sector for the renewal of the CGPJ.

This is how the spokesman expressed himself in a debate organized by the Cardenal Cisneros Center for Higher Studies on the practical consequences that the CGPJ, after the modification of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ) carried out by the Government in 2021, did not He can make discretionary appointments while he is in office, a situation in which he has been for four years, since 2018.

Ballestero, when asked if he considers that the Spanish judiciary is in danger, replied that "it is not." "Sufficient resources remain so that the Spanish citizenry can be completely sure that they will have an independent Judiciary like the one they have in general terms", he wanted to highlight.

"To have the absolute conviction that the CGPJ is a body at the service of judges that is going to fully fulfill its function", Ballestero has proclaimed, adding that "under no circumstances" in Spain is it going to enter "paths" that are not typical of democracies.

And he has recognized that Europe is "helping a lot" to the Spanish Justice, at the same time that he has stressed that the 1978 Constitution is "firm enough" so that democracy "continues to be maintained." "I am fully convinced", he has insisted, although he has recalled that without separation of powers there is no Constitution.

Regarding the reform that prevents the CGPJ from allocating the 70 vacancies for judges in the judicial leadership, Ballestero has denounced that as a result of this change in the law "the Constitution is not being complied with", because the Council has "amputated" its mandate.

"The expression is stupefying, since one of the constitutional functions is suspended. The Constitution is not being complied with in its entirety, this is truly surprising," said the member, who has emphasized that it is the task of the CGPJ to appoint the judges to "isolate" them from government interference.

Ballestero has criticized that the "equalization" that is made between a government in office and a CGPJ with an expired mandate --like the current one-- to urge its renewal leads to a "truly worrying" situation, since it supposes, "of some way", "introducing the Judiciary into the political cycle", which leads - he has warned - to the "attenuation of the separation of powers".

According to him, this type of argument "entails dangers" and time has shown that it is "very banal", since it was the Executive of Pedro Sánchez himself who later said the "opposite" by returning the capacity of appointments to the CGPJ this year but only for the two magistrates that it corresponds to designate for the TC.

"He had told us before that he could not make appointments, but then he told us that he could," Ballestero recalled, referring to the "rectification" of the legislator. Therefore, "all the argumentation in the explanatory statement of the 2021 law is seen to be a weak foundation, which has not withstood the passage of time, but rather a true constitutional contrast", he stressed, having not ruled still the TC on the resources against him.

Ballestero has pointed out that the non-renewal of the CGPJ is only due to the "blockade" of the political parties and this is so because the law is "technically bad" and "allows" it since, when it was reformed in 1985, the system of election of the members so that all are elected by Congress and the Senate by a majority of three fifths.

"This system has broken down everywhere. A technically bad law allows political parties to be tempted to manage the CGPJ," lamented the member.

In his opinion, it is "absolutely fundamental" to change the system of election of the 20 members that make up the Council, something that the Constitutional Court "warned" of in 1986, a year after the reform of the LOPJ, when ruling that the The change was valid as long as "it did not fall into partisanship", which it has "clearly" fallen into.

"It is time to reform this law. Europe, the European courts, the ECHR and the CJEU are telling us, but with sentences, not from five or ten years ago, but from 2021 and this year. Therefore, the model that we must follow for the renewal of the CGPJ is not the current one, which has given rise, due to its poor quality, to this collapse", he considered.

In addition to Ballestero, Celsa Pico, who is a magistrate of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court; Luis Ortiz, magistrate of the Criminal Section of the Provincial Court of Asturias, and Roberto García, current magistrate of the Court of First Instance number 30 of Barcelona.

Pico has denounced that the impossibility of the CGPJ to make appointments while it continues in office means that more and more are the pending matters that the Supreme Court accumulates and has given as an example that she, within the Third Chamber, exercises in the Fourth Section, but has They also have to do the work of some vacancies that exist in other sections due to the lack of magistrates.

And he has ensured that by not allowing the Council to appoint judges "the consequences that could have had were not thought about", while warning that the lack of appointments "facilitates corruption", since if there is a delay in the resolution of conflicts , the facts that deserve punishment can go unpunished for the delay in resolving.

Judge Luis Ortiz has intervened along the same lines, for whom this situation has "serious consequences" for citizens, seeing that they are "affected" by the delay in resolving the cases, since if before the Supreme Court resolved in less than a year "in general terms", now it is already more than a year and "going up".

"There are more and more issues, the hands are fewer and when hands are removed the consequences are that if things continue like this, people will have to be released from prison because the Supreme Court will not have time to resolve on time," Ortiz warned. , to stress that "provisional detention has maximum terms of two and four years."

For his part, Roberto García has said that the functions that have been "cut off" from the CGPJ are "very small", but they are the "key competences" because they are the "greedy ones" for the political parties, which "believe they have the right to influence the composition of the judiciary.

And he has criticized that the previous president of the Council, Carlos Lesmes, affirmed in 2014 that judges had to be controlled with "the carrot and the stick", calling them "donkeys". "In the end he himself was reducing the powers of the CGPJ to two: the appointment of charges (the carrot) and the disciplinary action (the stick)", he has illustrated.