May these lines serve to advance, even as an emergency, some comments on the "Organizational and procedural measures for the shock plan in the Administration of Justice after the state of alarm." Let us remember that the permanent commission of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has agreed to send thirteen proposals to the Ministry of Justice to study their inclusion in the royal decree-law of urgent measures for the Administration of Justice in relation to the management of the pandemic. COVID-19.
The document includes six measures for the civil jurisdictional order, two for the contentious-administrative, four for the social and a general one on rules for the computation of administrative and procedural terms and deadlines, interrupted and suspended as a result of the declaration of the state of alarm. .
The first of the conclusions that we can draw from this document is that the vast majority of the proposed measures have nothing to do with the state of alarm, but rather it is a matter of profound reforms of procedural laws.
Therefore, what is really proposed in this "supposed" crash plan is nothing else, in reality, than the modification of essential norms that affect judicial processes in a structural way, and what this means is, no more and no less, that they are going to affect in a direct way (without imagining that this state of alarm would serve for it) to the fundamental rights of the defendants.
We will see where this crash plan takes us, but what we must do is, in any case and to the extent of our possibilities, make clear mention that a large part of the operators that make up the Justice sector in this country (Judges, officials, lawyers who, incidentally, have not been consulted) do not share or agree with this plan.
It is not accepted that it is intended to take advantage of the state of alarm to carry out legal reforms that truly require the participation and consensus of all parties involved, a much more serene and calm study, and, of course, a parliamentary debate on all the political forces, given that many of the proposed measures, require parliamentary processing, study and approval of the advisory bodies, and this (another mistake in the plan if you really wanted to be a shock) what it means is the slowdown of the same and the loss of effectiveness right now.
We dare to affirm that the plan has been created and elaborated by those who do not know the daily reality of the world of Justice, of the day-to-day life of the courts, and who have long been away from that reality that they seek to solve.
Many of the CGPJ measures should be rejected because they violate the principle of normative hierarchy. You cannot (should not) take advantage of an alarm state to undertake all these changes in an accelerated and fast way, since, for example, access to resources is limited, to personal notifications, in some cases it is intended to punish to those who want to exercise their fundamental right of access to Justice.
It goes back to the idea, already tested and with little success, of centralizing, concentrating and promoting the specialization of the Courts (ad hoc creation of Courts), since it seems that the failure of the courts with abusive financial clauses has been forgotten. In short, we understand that this is not the way or the time to undertake these reforms, which, as we said, are not going to provide a solution or the state of alarm, much less Justice.
And perhaps most importantly, nothing contained in this "crash plan" can be carried out without the adequate provision of human, material and financial means and will only remain in a demonstration "supposedly" of good will, remaining as the headline of this writing in a "toast to the sun", which will not take us anywhere or, what is worse, will take us where the vast majority of citizens do not want to go.
Antonio Ballester / Juan Antonio Soriano
Managing Partner / Of counsel TOMARIAL Abogados y Asesores Tributarios
