The Plenary of Congress is set to select ten new members for the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) this Tuesday. This election pertains to representatives from the lower house and is part of a judicial reform agreement reached by the PSOE and PP parties. This initiative aims to renew the governing body of judges, which has been operating in a caretaker capacity since December 2018 when its previous mandate expired.
Out of the ten members to be chosen from the lower house, six will come from judicial backgrounds, while four will be recognized legal experts. Voting will occur in two rounds: one for the judicial members and another for the jurists. Each deputy will be limited to selecting no more than six or four names on their ballots, respectively. A qualified majority of three-fifths, or 210 votes, is required for these selections. However, this threshold is expected to be easily surpassed due to support from the two major parties.
It remains unclear if Sumar, the government’s minor partner, will back all the candidates or just Inés Herreros, proposed by the plurinational group alongside Carlos Preciado, who is to be elected by the Senate.
Most parliamentary groups have opted to refrain from the process, having not been consulted about the candidates. Vox and Junts attended the selection committee only to express their criticism of the bipartite agreement. Other groups, with the exception of Unión del Pueblo Navarro, did not participate.
Specifically, in the jurist category, the candidates presented are José Luis Costa Pillado (President of the Consultative Council of Galicia), Inés María Herreros Hernández (a prosecutor and former president of the Progressive Association of Prosecutors), Pilar Jiménez (Chief Prosecutor of Cantabria), and Argelia Queralt (a professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona and a lawyer for the Constitutional Court).
For the judicial nominees, the Congress will decide on Ángel Arozamena (a Supreme Court judge), Esther Erice (a judge from the High Court of Justice of Navarre), Gema Espinosa (a judge from the Provincial Court of Barcelona), José María Fernández Seijo (a commercial judge in Barcelona), José María Páez (the chief judge of Málaga), and José Carlos Orga (a judge from the Provincial Court of Logroño).
On the same day, Congress will also approve a proposed law for sending to the Senate, which was negotiated by PSOE and PP to reform the Judicial Power Act and the Statute of the Public Prosecutor. The aim of this reform is to prevent so-called ‘revolving doors’ in the judiciary, strengthen majorities for judicial appointments, and task the new CGPJ with proposing changes to the selection system for members.
This future law will establish new incompatibility rules for appointments, including the prohibition of nominating anyone who has served in certain government positions, like minister or regional councilor, within the past five years, for the role of Attorney General.
During the processing of this proposed law, the PSOE and PP made only technical adjustments and rejected amendments put forward by Sumar, which abstained from voting in the Justice Committee due to seeing the text as insufficient. Vox and Junts opposed the proposal, while other parties chose not to participate in the committee discussions.
The following day, Wednesday, the Senate will conduct a similar process for selecting ten members, with its required majority set at 159 votes. The candidates for voting in the Senate include Ricardo Bodas (a retired Supreme Court judge), Bernardo Fernández (former president of the Consultative Council of Asturias), Luis Martín Contreras (lawyer for the Justice Administration at the Supreme Court), and Isabel Revuelta (lawyer for the Cortes).
The six candidates from the judicial sector for the Senate will be José Antonio Montero (a Supreme Court judge), José Eduardo Martínez Mediavilla (President of the Provincial Court of Cuenca), Esther Rojo (President of the Provincial Court of Valencia), Carlos Hugo Preciado (High Court of Justice of Catalonia), Alejandro Abascal (National Court judge), and Lucía Avilés (a criminal judge in Mataró, Barcelona).
Once all selected members from both Congress and the Senate are in office, they will have between three to seven days to choose their president, who will also serve as the president of the Supreme Court.
Additionally, the Senate will vote on Wednesday for a new judge for the Constitutional Court, to fill the vacancy left by Alfredo Montoya in July 2022 due to health issues. The substitution is assigned to the PP, which has negotiated with the PSOE to promote José María Macías, a member of the CGPJ from the conservative bloc.
Macías passed the suitability test in the Senate with endorsements from the PP, PSOE, Sumar, and Agrupación Herreña Independiente, while UPN abstained. He will need the backing of at least 159 senators to be appointed.
Finally, the Senate will also debate and vote on the judicial reform proposed by the PP and PSOE, which has already been approved in Congress. The aim is for the reform to be finalized in the plenary session scheduled for July 31.
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