“I wouldn’t want to be rude to my hosts by mentioning this case…” This is how the president of the Strasbourg Court began this Thursday with her reference to the latest ruling condemning Spain, the one referring to the lack of renewal of the CGPJ and, with it, the blocking of the most important judicial appointments.
After the disclaimer, the Irish Síofra O’Leary has gone on to maintain that it is justified for judges to intervene when political disagreements end up putting the separation of powers and the democratic system itself at risk.
“When blockages occur at the political level in relation to the appointment of judges, national and European courts may have to intervene in defense of both judicial independence and the proper functioning of a democratic rule of law,” said O’Leary in perfect Castilian (she is married to a Spaniard).
The statement came at the headquarters of the Constitutional Court, sitting next to its president, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, and the same week that the TC has given its approval to the legal reform that prevents the CGPJ from making judicial appointments until it is renewed. .
Recently, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) itself condemned Spain, at the request of several judges aspiring to be members of the Council, for the inaction of the Cortes in the renewal of this body.
O’Leary’s reference could be “inappropriate” with the court chaired by Conde Pumpido, but also with the previous one with a conservative majority, which had previously simply dismissed the arguments that Strasbourg finally accepted. “It would have been reasonable,” he said, to expect “adequate motivation” from the TC.
In addition to the message to the Constitutional Court, O’Leary has made less direct references to the process. The ECHR has appeals against the Supreme Court’s sentences on the table and has just asked the Government to convey its opinion on the prison sentences imposed by the High Court.
In the conclusions of her speech on the “contribution to the European legal space and current challenges” of the ECtHR, the judge indicated that, “like the other member states of the Council of Europe, in addition to the centrifugal forces that affect us all in Europe “Spain faces its own internal challenges.”
He has continued to indicate that the ECtHR will continue to ensure the “protection of fundamental rights”, which those convicted of the process consider violated. But it will do so, he concluded, “without losing sight of the European context as a whole and the particular situation of each State.”
What there has been no hint of in O’Leary’s intervention is any mention of a possible amnesty law and the problems it could encounter in the European courts.
