Lesmes inaugurates this week the judicial year with the CGPJ in office for the fourth consecutive year

The act will be one day before the Council debates the names of the two magistrates that it must designate for the Constitutional

MADRID, 4 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Plenary Hall of the Supreme Court will receive this Wednesday King Felipe VI, the new Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, and the President of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), Carlos Lesmes, for the opening of the judicial year 2022- 2023, the fourth in a row that is celebrated with the governing body of acting judges.

Although the monarch and the president of the CGPJ have coincided in the solemn act since 2014, it will be the first time that García Ortiz attends the event as attorney general, a position he promised in August --after replacing Dolores Delgado-- and of which he will take office this same Monday in the Prosecutor's Office and the Supreme Court.

As in the last four years, Lesmes will repeat given the impossibility of the parliamentary groups to reach an agreement to renew the CGPJ, whose mandate has expired since the end of 2018. It is expected that, as he has done in previous speeches, the President of the Council highlights the interim situation.

Last year, Lesmes described the situation as "unsustainable" for the judiciary and urged the political forces to leave this issue out of the "partisan fight" and reach an agreement in "the next few weeks." On that occasion, he insisted that this anomaly was due to "causes that are completely foreign to him" and recalled that it is the Congress and the Senate who must appoint new members every five years, a term that is not "merely indicative", but "are obliged" to respect it.

Another 365 days have passed and the parties have not yet reached an agreement that would allow the CGPJ to be renewed. Along the way, the judges' associations raised the issue with the European Commissioner for Justice; The vice-president of the European Commission responsible for the rule of law visited Spain, urged renewal and urged that the system for appointing members of the Council be studied so that it conforms to European standards; and the PP changed leadership. The appointments of the new members, however, have not yet arrived.

Now, to the controversy of an expired CGPJ is added the expired mandate of four of the 12 magistrates of the Constitutional Court (TC), which corresponds to renew in equal parts --with two each-- the Government and the governing body of the judges.

This year, the inauguration of the judicial course will take place one day before the CGPJ celebrates the extraordinary plenary session that was convened to agree on the name of the two magistrates to the Constitutional Court that corresponds to appoint.

Lesmes has warned that, although the ideal is that an agreement be reached in that same conclave --something to which he has exhorted the members--, he cannot guarantee that this will be the case, given that the two candidates for the TC must collect at least 12 favorable votes of the 19 at stake.

The CGPJ will be able to cover these vacancies in the court of guarantees after the Government promoted a legal reform that has returned to the governing body of the judges its power to --while in office-- make appointments in the judicial leadership, although only which corresponds to the Constitutional. Said reform leaves out the possibility of making appointments in the Supreme Court, which already in October warned that the fact of not filling the vacancies would imply that a year 1,000 fewer sentences would be carried out.