The Supreme reprimands Vox and PP for exercising a "popular action of a political nature" against government decisions


The Supreme Court has made public the two sentences that reject the resources of Vox and Popular Party against the appointment of Dolores Delgado as State Attorney General. Two resolutions in which the judges harshly reproach both parties for trying to exercise a "popular action of a political nature" that does not exist in the Law to appeal government appointments and acts that are not entitled to appeal. The judges also drop that their decision was predictable due to their "overwhelming" jurisprudence with more than 20 cases resolved in a similar sense in recent years.


Convictions on costs and reproaches of the Supreme Court: the failures of Vox in Justice that silences the party

Convictions on costs and reproaches of the Supreme Court: the failures of Vox in Justice that silences the party

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Both PP and Vox led the appointment of Delgado before the third room of the Supreme Court denouncing that her political past in the ranks of the PSOE as a deputy and as Minister of Justice posed too great a doubt about her impartiality to be in charge of the Prosecutor's Office. At first, a group of magistrates requested that the case be brought to full session, but it finally fell into the hands of a section led by César Tolosa, president of the contentious-administrative chamber.

The Supreme Court did not even get to the bottom of the matter and devotes more than twenty pages to explaining why, in the first place, neither of the two parties is entitled to appeal this appointment. The ruling acknowledges that political parties "are fundamental instruments for the political participation of citizens in the democratic State" but adds that this does not allow them to exercise constant popular action against the acts of the Government. That condition, the judges say, "is not sufficient, by itself, to confer legitimacy in challenging any act that may have political relevance or that may be considered a political act" if there is no connection between the rights and interests of the individual. party and appellate appointment.

It is here when the room, with the magistrate Pilar Teso as speaker, launches the harshest reproaches to the resources of Vox and PP. Allowing them to appeal matters such as the appointment of Delgado would suppose "a universal legitimacy to challenge any act that had a political nature, impact or repercussion" and that "would ultimately amount to establishing a popular action of a political nature, fast of legal coverage." Control of the Government, recalls the sentence, is exercised through deputies and senators but not necessarily through the courts.

This, remember the Supreme, is not a novelty. The judges say that "our jurisprudence is overwhelming in declaring that the active legitimacy of political parties does not concur, in general, to challenge any action" of the Government or other public administrations. They cite up to 24 resolutions from the same third chamber in that sense, some of which have been issued in processes arising from appeals filed precisely by Vox and the Popular Party and also by other parties such as the PSOE, Izquierda Unida or UPyD. The constitutional relevance of the parties and their function of control to the Government, they emphasize, "cannot serve as a justification to confer that universal action that allows to challenge the actions of the Government and the Administration, from which they may legitimately disagree."

The more than 20 cases presented to justify its decision, adds the Supreme Court, not only imply that its jurisprudence "is not new or recent." What is "a novelty", say the judges, is the increase in political parties that go to the Supreme Court to challenge acts of the Government or other public administrations. They speak of an "increase in the frequency with which, at present, the parties go to this Third Chamber. And that is what has determined an increase in the inadmissibility resolutions for this cause," they settle.

The political discrepancy, therefore, does not legitimize Vox and PP to take their parliamentary contests to the Supreme Court indiscriminately. The Supreme Court clearly says that "it is not enough for you to disagree with an act, or it is justifiably considered that it is not in accordance with the Law, to proceed to challenge it before the judges and courts of our jurisdictional order. It is also necessary that mediate a concrete and determined relationship between the subject making the appeal and the object of the process ".

The rejection of both resources has an economic cost for Vox and the PP. Their claims have been rejected outright, without even having to study the merits of the matter, so they are sentenced to pay costs: each party must pay up to a maximum of 4,000 euros each for the judicial resources mobilized to resolve resources that neither they could even interpose. As explained by elDiario.es in this report, It is common for the criminal and contentious judicial actions announced by Vox before the Supreme Court to end in dismissal, inadmissions and convictions on costs that are often silenced by the party.

Private Vows

The two judgments made public today by the Supreme Court also collect the individual votes of two magistrates who understand that the two parties could file the appeals and that they should have entered to examine the merits of the matter. Both José Luis Requero and Antonio Fonseca-Herrero include dissenting votes against the decision made by the court.

Requero, for example, shares with the rest of his colleagues that a party does not simply have a legitimate interest to appeal any act of the Government, but adds that in this case the attorney general "has formidable powers from the point of view of the repressive power of the State. that the plaintiff understands that she can exercise to her detriment, then for political purposes "so questioning her independence and impartiality goes" beyond the political to enter the legal, generating her legitimizing interest. "

Even so, Requero acknowledges that the best thing would have been if the appeal had been presented by tax associations, legitimized to raise this type of appeal. The magistrate even throws a dart at those who have criticized the appointment and have not appealed: they should have done so "if this appointment is so contrary in that professional field - judging by the press -", ​​while recalling that this was the case in the case of Eligio Hernández in the early nineties. "But those had to be other times," he laments.



Descending to the detail and the substance of the matter, Requero does not question that Dolores Delgado can be considered a jurist of recognized prestige and assures that "I do not believe that such a requirement can be questioned to who is a member of the Fiscal Career with years of experience in it" . It even recognizes that, once reached that point, the court would have to have rejected the demand of PP and Vox unless it had chosen to raise a preliminary question to the European courts.

In a similar sense, Antonio Fonseca-Herrero pronounces himself in his private opinion when he affirms that "I do not understand possible a general rejection of the legitimacy of a political party to challenge an act of the Government." In this case, according to the magistrate, there was a specific, effective and accredited connection between the appointment (object of the contested act) and the action of the political party, with direct effect on its legal-political position ".

This magistrate does understand, not as I request, that the court should have given the reason to PP and Vox and have annulled Delgado's appointment "because the person appointed for the position of State Attorney General did not have the essential condition of suitability ". It is forceful in stating that she was proposed for the position "immediately after having carried out, without interruption," the functions of minister and deputy and that, therefore, "she was proposed as a person" functionally "integrated into a specific political formation (Socialist Party Spanish Worker -PSOE-) ".

All this is contrary, says the magistrate, "to the aim of maintaining the appearance of impartiality pursued by the legislator" and settles his private vote by ensuring that, in addition, his appointment may imply "a clear negative impact on the loss of confidence of citizens in an adequate functioning of fundamental institutions of the rule of law ".

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