Julio García
The judges’ and prosecutors’ associations that last week called for three days of strikes in Spain in protest against the government’s judicial reform projects took their rejection of these legislative initiatives to the European Parliament on Tuesday, which reform access to the profession and the status of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The five associations that traveled to Strasbourg, France, during the institution’s plenary session are the Professional Association of the Judiciary (APM), the Francisco de Vitoria Judicial Association (AJFV), the Independent Judicial Forum (FJI), the Association of Prosecutors (AF), and the Independent Professional Association of Prosecutors (APIF), according to EFE.
In statements to the press, the judges and prosecutors pointed to the draft amendment to the Judiciary Law and the draft reform of the Organic Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office as “responses” to the corruption cases within the PSOE, which, in their opinion, are a way for the government to “introduce substitute judges and prosecutors through the back door.”
This reform, criticized Cristina Dexeus (AF), allows people “with profiles that are of interest to the government” to enter the judicial system and “thus opens the door to the colonization of the judicial and prosecutorial professions as well.”
Reform of the Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office
Dexeus also elaborated on the reform of the Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which she described as a “fake job” that separates the mandate of the Attorney General from that of the legislature but, she said, gives this position more power to the detriment of the independence of prosecutors.
The associations met this Tuesday with several European political groups; with the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola; and with EU Vice President Henna Virkkunen, to whom they conveyed “the current situation in Spain and its commitment to the rule of law.”
“Reforms have been introduced for many years that are invariably aimed at, in some way, generating distrust in judges, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the justice system, and gradually introducing changes to the system that are at the very least dubious, very dubious,” warned Alejandro González Mariscal de Gante (APM).