The announcement of parliamentary elections for next July 23 affects the work of the Constitutional Court, which has decided to postpone the debate on some particularly sensitive judgments so that they do not coincide with the election campaign and the holding of the elections. Matters that will remain on hold until next September include an appeal against the General Council of the Judiciary’s (CGPJ) ban on appointments during his tenure, as well as the request for Amparo by former Podemos deputy Alberto Rodríguez after he was stripped of his seat, because he was convicted of kicking a police officer at the end of a demonstration. Other judgments related to the exercise of fundamental rights in the context of the impact of the pandemic are also being postponed.
The Constitutional Court has not stopped its work, but will focus on issues of minor political importance in the next plenary sessions in June and July. The PP’s appeal against the ban on appointments could have been analyzed before the last appointment to the court last January. But then there was no consensus to submit it to the plenary, in a context of serious confrontation between the government and the PP over the decay of the institutions, facilitated by the blockade of the renewal of the senior judiciary for a year and a half, which has been going on for four years. At that time, the criterion was that the appearance of a political initiative had to be given an opportunity to resolve the political issue raised, so that the purely legal debate on the powers of the Council could take place during the periods when its mandate ended But it still is in office and could be addressed in a more relaxed atmosphere.
Following the renewal of the constitution earlier in the year, the court’s engines were restarted to finalize the draft verdict and it was scheduled to be debated later in June. Basically, the prevailing opinion was in favor of keeping this ban on appointments in the transitional periods between one expired term of office and another, which must begin through an agreement of the parliamentary political forces. There will be a discussion in plenary, but currently the Constitutional Court has a consolidated progressive majority that has not changed the original criteria it defended on the matter. What we want to avoid is that at this point, certain court decisions, whatever their sign, interfere with the election period by reopening certain debates about which there is still strong political controversy.
A related case is the loss of the seat by former Podemos deputy Alberto Rodríguez. It was understood in the constitutional media that the ruling would benefit his application for Amparo, which has a dual aspect. On the one hand, the appeal was directed against the judgment handed down by the Supreme Court. On the other hand, he questioned the decision of Congress President Meritxell Batet, believing that the decision taken should mean the loss of the seat. The original intention of the Guarantor Authority was to present this case to the plenum in June as well. However, there is also no urgency unless the sentence imposed would mean the MP’s return to the post to which he was elected in the previous elections. On the other hand, this judgment directly concerns issues related to the rights of parliamentarians and it did not seem advisable to deal with the specific case throughout the parliamentary term.
With regard to the exercise of fundamental rights in the context of the pandemic, the Constitutional Court must rule on the ban on demonstrations on the occasion of Working Women’s Day on March 8, 2021. At this point in time, the level of risk was no longer the same as in the previous year. The unions appealed the ban. So far, in all of its judgments, the court has prioritized the protection of public health over the right to demonstrate.
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