The new president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), Isabel Perelló, has proposed Dimitry Berberoff, a judge from the Contentious-Administrative Division of the Supreme Court, as vice-president of the High Court, according to the governing body of the judges.
The name of Berberoff, who is vice-president of the conservative and majority Professional Association of the Judiciary (APM), has been proposed by the members elected at the request of the PP. With her election, the new president sends a conciliatory message in a new stage marked by the need to reach agreements given the current distribution of the body, with eleven progressives (ten members and the president) and ten conservatives. In a statement, the CGPJ points out that Berberoff will not hold organic positions in any judicial association during her term as vice-president of the Supreme Court.
Once the proposal has been made official, the members will have a little over a week to analyse it and decide whether to ratify it in a plenary session scheduled for 25 September. Its election requires a majority of three-fifths (13 votes), so the two blocks of the CGPJ must reach an agreement. The figure of the vice-presidency of the Supreme Court has been in force since 2013. The then president of the CGPJ, the conservative Carlos Lesmes, also chose a magistrate of different ideological affinity: the progressive Ángel Juanes.
According to the court in a press release, with the candidacy of Berberoff, who was a lawyer at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) between 2007 and 2010 and a member of the Network of Experts in European Union Law (REDUE) of the CGPJ and author of numerous publications on this subject, the president intends to “strengthen the European dimension of the Supreme Court.”
Berberoff has been a Supreme Court judge since 2018, when he obtained the post with the support of only nine of the 21 members of the plenary session. At that time, the law that allowed appointments to the High Court only with a simple majority was still in force. Until his appointment, he was director of the Supreme Court’s Technical Office, where Lesmes placed him when he began his term. His mission was to assist the president — that is, Lesmes himself — and the chambers.
His appointment was appealed by another of the judges who ran for the post. By three votes to two, judges from the same Third Chamber endorsed his appointment. In a dissenting vote, two judges warned that discretionary appointments “delegitimize” the judicial system, according to infoLibre.
Source: www.eldiario.es
