On July 19, four days before the general elections, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) will hold what will be the last plenary session led by the current acting president. Rafael Mozo, from the progressive block, will say goodbye to start his retirement and leave behind an even more depleted and weakened body, full of blocks and confrontations in which the passage of time and recent events have taken their toll on an institutional degradation in the one that, what weighs the most, is the unnatural interim that has kept it active for almost a decade.

The departure of Mozo leaves the progressives in a clear minority and opens the way for the replacement of the presidency that, as already happened with him, will be marked by the age of its members. Although the succession is still not clear, the natural candidate is Vicente Guilarte, 70, elected at the time on the proposal of the PP in the turn of renowned jurists. Currently, he practices law, has been a lawyer at the College of Property and Mercantile Registrars of Spain and is a legal adviser at the University of Valladolid.. During the last months, there have been doubts about whether or not he will accept the position, which requires full dedication..

If the forecast is fulfilled, Guilarte will occupy as Mozo only the presidency of the Council and that of the Supreme Court will continue in the hands of Francisco Marín. The TS can only be chaired, even in office, by one of its magistrates and neither Mozo nor his probable substitute meet that condition. The governing body of the judges will remain with 16 members of the original 21, including the president.

The forecasts of all the members suggest that the current CGPJ will continue to be active for at least several months after the general elections. On the agenda for the first 100 days of government, the PP plans to take advantage of a hypothetical change in the majority in Congress to carry out the reform of the Judiciary, with which to modify the system of election of judges and that these be the to elect 12 of the 20 members of the General Council of the Judiciary. In this way, the renewal will not be done with the current rules, but rather most of the new members will be chosen by their fellow students..

The change of the system will inevitably lengthen the times. Once the elections are held and as long as it is the PP who has options to govern, the government formation process would start, which, depending on the results, will be more or less complicated and, with luck, will last for weeks.. After this, the PP would have to approve the legislative reform. Drafting it and carrying it out will continue to add months to the calculation. Finally, the judges would have to organize this internal election of their candidates, a process that, according to the aforementioned sources, will take at least three months, being optimistic.

adding casualties

While all this is happening, the Supreme Court will continue adding casualties, which are not covered as a result of the reform that the current Executive approved and that prevents the Council from making appointments when its term has ended. In the high court, the vacancies exceed 20, with special incidence in the Contentious-Administrative and Social Chambers.

The PP may try to stop this trickle of exits without replacement with intermediate solutions that avoid damage. One of the possibilities is the total or partial repeal of this limiting reform of appointments. The other is already reflected in the bill that Feijóo's party registered in the last legislature: raise the retirement age of magistrates, now set at 72, to 74, and thus gain time to implement the new system.