Aquí Europa
The vice president of the European Commission in charge of Rule of Law, Vera Jourova, will wait to have concrete proposals from the PP and the PSOE before deciding whether to call a meeting in the coming days to reactivate the mediation on the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary ( CGPJ), since it wants to be sure that there is a “basis” for negotiation before taking new steps, community sources have reported.
After a three-month break in contacts with Brussels, the negotiators of the PSOE and the PP – the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños; and the Deputy Secretary of Institutional Affairs of the PP, Esteban González Pons, respectively – contacted Jourova on Wednesday to request a meeting in the coming days.
The vice president took note of what was discussed and is now “examining” the request for a new meeting, according to what a community spokesperson said yesterday at a press conference, who avoided setting a date for the eventual meeting. “Yesterday we received a request for a meeting from both parties. Now we are examining it and we are in contact with the parties,” said Justice spokesman Christian Wigand.
However, Europa Press reports, other community sources specify that Jourova hopes to see “some type of proposal” to understand where the talks between PP and PSOE are at and assess whether a three-way meeting can be “effective” in the process. “The important thing is to understand that the Commission is willing to meet, but that meeting must have meaning,” the sources indicated, stressing that Brussels does not set conditions to resume mediation but does want to be sure that if there is a meeting it can be “effective.” “.
In this framework, it seems unlikely that the necessary steps will be taken for Jourova to accept Bolaños’ invitation to travel to Madrid this Friday to meet with him and González Pons, but in Brussels they do consider the possibility of mediation next week. on a date and place to be determined, but provided that detailed proposals arrive first.
No mediation since March
The calls from González Pons and Bolaños to Jourova on Wednesday are the first contact within the framework of the mediation that the negotiators have had with the vice president, who inherited this task from the Commissioner of Justice, Didier Reynders, last April, when he He took a leave of absence to compete for the leadership of the Council of Europe, a body outside the European Union.
The last three-way meeting took place on March 13 in Strasbourg (France), when Reynders met for the last time with Bolaños and Pons on the sidelines of the European Parliament plenary session. The still commissioner left that meeting optimistic and summoned both on March 27 for a new meeting in Madrid that was never held after the ‘popular’ asked for a postponement and Brussels confirmed that the parties needed “more time.”
The Commission accepted the unprecedented request for mediation between political parties last January and established a “structured dialogue” to address only the blockage of the CGPJ based on the annual recommendations on the rule of law of the Community Executive and that leaves out other controversial issues such as the amnesty law.
In these recommendations, the Commission urges Spain to renew the governing body of judges as a priority and to begin “immediately thereafter” the process of reforming the system of electing members. Both PSOE and PP have expressed their willingness to unblock the situation, but they clash over the timing regarding the reform, which the ‘popular’ want to negotiate in parallel to the renewal, but which the PSOE wants to leave for later.
