The agreement to renew the TC comes 198 days later and after a crisis in the court that stopped its reform in the Cortes

MADRID, 27 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The agreement to renew the Constitutional Court (TC) comes 198 days after four magistrates saw their mandate expire and after an unprecedented situation in which a divided court urgently suspended a parliamentary process that sought to modify the election system and the arrival of the two candidates to the court appointed by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).

The Government and the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) have managed to present the names of the four TC magistrates who will replace those who saw their mandate expire on June 12 and who have been in office for six months waiting for the Executive and the governing body of the judges took the step for the partial renewal of the court of guarantees.

With this agreement, the departure of the president of the court, Pedro González-Trevijano, of his vice-president Juan Antonio Xiol and of the magistrates Antonio Narváez and Santiago Martínez-Vares will be formalized. In their day, González-Trevijano and Narváez were the two proposed by the Government of Mariano Rajoy, while Xiol and Martínez-Vares were nominated by the CGPJ.

The Constitution establishes that the court must be renewed by thirds every three years. Thus, the Government and the CGPJ should have appointed four of the 12 magistrates six months ago, but - as a result of a legal reform executed in March 2021 that prohibited the acting Council from making appointments in the judicial leadership - the body of the judges was limited to choose the two that corresponded to him.

Faced with the impossibility of the CGPJ being able to fulfill its part, the Executive considered appointing its two candidates for the Constitutional Court without waiting for the organ of the judges. However, legal sources consulted by Europa Press cast doubt on the legal possibility that those nominated by Moncloa could take office without waiting for those of the Council.

This summer, faced with these legal doubts, the lack of agreement between the PSOE and the PP to renew the CGPJ and in view of the fact that the Constitutional Court was entering a period with its acting president and vice president, the Socialist Group presented a proposal to law that promoted an express legal reform.

Specifically, the reform of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ) made it possible to unblock the renewal of the Constitutional Court by returning to the acting CGPJ its ability to make appointments, but only to appoint its two candidates to the court of guarantees.

On July 21, the Senate approved the express reform and enabled the Council to appoint its two candidates to the guarantee court, which are added to the two appointed by the Executive and who must receive the approval of the Constitutional Plenary before assuming office. The charge.

The Government, however, set a deadline for doing so: September 13. This deadline generated discomfort within the CPGJ, especially in the conservative sector, which gave rise to a 'de facto' blockade in internal negotiations.

After these movements, the members of the CGPJ began the first contacts to establish some candidates. Initially, however, the conservative bloc threatened to refuse to make the appointments. Faced with this scenario, the President of the Council, Carlos Lesmes, warned that he would not consent to "a CPGJ in absentia", because the nomination of the two candidates for the Constitutional Court is an obligation that the Magna Carta imposes on the CGPJ.

A day later, the conservative members held an internal meeting to establish a position and decided to "defend the institutionality in any case", which implied reaching "duly consensual agreements" but respecting "the decision times of the Council", as reported to Europe Press sources familiar with the meeting.

It was agreed that the conservative bloc and the progressive wing would each study on their own a battery of possible candidates and that the Plenary of the CGPJ would not meet until there were no names on the table. Subsequently, meetings were held between the interlocutors of both sectors, but the deadline of September 13 ran out without any agreement.

12 of the 19 votes at stake were required -those of the 18 members plus that of Lesmes-, hence reaching an agreement was not easy, because it was necessary to turn some members to reach said three-fifths majority.

Lesmes unsuccessfully convened up to three Plenary Sessions. Although the progressives announced their nine possible candidates, the conservatives claimed that their search for candidates had been "unsuccessful".

On October 5, the progressive interlocutors --the members Álvaro Cuesta, Rafael Mozo and Roser Bach-- issued a statement in which they announced that, given the stagnation and "the lack of a specific time horizon," they had decided to start " the exploration of other alternative ways" to "comply in the shortest possible time" with the constitutional "mandate" to make the appointments.

The question of appointments to the TC took a backseat on October 9. That Sunday afternoon, Lesmes announced that the following day he would resign as president of the CGPJ and the Supreme Court, after noting the lack of progress in the negotiations between PSOE and PP to renew the Council.

Lesmes thus fulfilled what he said during the opening act of the judicial year on September 7, when he dropped that, if there was no renewal, he would have to do things that he did not like but were necessary, a veiled threat of resignation that minutes later he confirmed to the press.

However, that same day he specified that he would try not to give up until at least the nominations for the TC were on track. For this reason, he worked until the last minute so that the conservative and progressive members reached an agreement on the two candidates for the court of guarantees.

The resignation of Lesmes led the Government to summon the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to a meeting in La Moncloa on the same Monday that he signed the resignation, which reactivated contacts for the renewal of the CGPJ, in office since December 2018 before the inability of the socialists and the 'popular' to reach an agreement to elect the 20 members. But those negotiations also failed when the PP found out that the government was working on a reform to repeal sedition.

That reform materialized and reached the Cortes Generales, where the PSOE and Unidas Podemos proposed via amendment --in the law that repealed sedition-- to modify the system of election and arrival of the two candidates to the court appointed by the CGPJ.

This path, however, was paralyzed by the Constitutional itself, since it admitted applying the very precautionary measures requested by the PP in an appeal filed against the processing of said amendments in the Cortes. An unprecedented decision in the history of the TC.

This Tuesday, in a press conference after the Council of Ministers, the president, Pedro Sánchez, assured that if the members of the CGPJ reached an agreement this afternoon to choose their two candidates, the "urgency" to present a bill that reforms the system and the majorities necessary for those appointments "would not be the same."

Hours later, the CGPJ announced that it had unanimously agreed to support the candidacy of Supreme Court magistrate César Tolosa and retired High Court magistrate María Luisa Segoviano. Both names will be added to the two Moncloa candidates: the magistrate of the National Court and former Minister of Justice Juan Carlos Campo and the former director general of the Ministry of the Presidency Laura Díez.