PSOE deputy encourages the presidents of Congress and the Senate to get involved to renew the CGPJ

Elorza believes that until now "that role" has been taken away from Parliament and that it would be good to strengthen the "separation of powers"

MADRID, 31 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The PSOE spokesman in the Constitutional Commission of Congress, Odón Elorza, considers that the president of the Lower House, Meritxell Batet, and the president of the Senate, Ander Gil, should get involved to try to unblock the current situation and renew the members of the Council General of the Judiciary (CGPJ) who have had their mandate expired for more than four years.

In Elorza's opinion, throughout this process "Parliament" has been "subtracted" from the role that corresponds to it legally and constitutionally, since the Courts are in charge of appointing the twenty members that make up the governing body of judges. Each Chamber elects ten members (six active judges and four renowned jurists).

Since September 2018, three months before the end of the mandate of the members elected in 2013, the Congress and the Senate have in their hands the list of 51 judges or magistrates aspiring to become members for the judicial shift. All of them obtained twenty-five endorsements from members of the judicial career also in active service or that of a judicial association, as established by current legislation.

However, the election process has been paralyzed since then due to the lack of agreement between the two main parties. The norm establishes that both the members of the judicial turn and that of jurists will be chosen by three fifths of the Chambers, which forces the PSOE and the PP to agree on the names in both cases.

Elorza maintains that, if the blockade persists by the PP, perhaps there will be no other choice than to modify the law to lower the majority necessary for the appointment of the members, but he is in favor of making one last attempt to find consensus and is in favor of the negotiations that until now have fallen to the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and the Vice-Secretary for Institutional Policy and MEP of the PP, Esteban González Pons, are led by the presidents of both Chambers.

"It could be said that what I am proposing is naive, but it is what the law establishes," said the Basque deputy in statements to Europa Press. "This procedure has not been developed in Parliament because it has always been the habit of entrusting this task of negotiation and agreement to the two political parties that have negotiated it in a room either in Moncloa or in Genoa. That procedure has been subtracted paper to Parliament", he adds.

In this context, it proposes that Batet and Gil, "consulting the process to follow with the Tables of both Chambers", be the ones to direct this negotiation "in the parliamentary framework" and, specifically, in the Board of Spokesmen, where representatives have seats of all groups.

That is the area in which, from his point of view, the twelve called to become members should be selected from the list of candidates sent by judges and also from which the six consensus jurists should emerge.

"If this process is not culminated in this way, which is as established by law, I fully accept that the majorities be changed, although it is true that it would be desirable to try to maintain the requirement of a qualified majority to force consensus," he adds.

To this he adds that parliamentary groups should have "the intellectual generosity" not to put "partisan" proposals on the table, but instead opt for people with "a track record, solvency and guarantee of independence when it comes to carrying out their function." "The distribution based on absolutely partisan quotas is not good," he warns.

In addition, Elorza maintains that the procedure that he defends would also resolve the recommendations that the European Union has been making in this matter and "would help to give more guarantees and make the separation of powers more effective", as well as "break a little the scheme of operation between the conservative or progressive blocs".