Adrián Vázquez, MEP: The Commission’s report puts Spain’s rule of law on a par with Hungary’s

It might seem that justice has returned this week to the center of the political agenda following the publication of the State of the Rule of Law Report (2026) by the European Commission and the two judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the amnesty law. But the truth is that the relationship between justice and politics—even though this centrality is not good news—has become a constant debate in recent years.

Adrián Vázquez Lázara, a People’s Party MEP and vice-chair of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the European Parliament, knows the European dimension of these controversies well. For years he has followed from Brussels the debates on judicial independence, the rule of law and how the Spanish legal order fits within the European framework.

In an interview with Agenda Pública, Vázquez argues that the Government “has done absolutely nothing of what was asked of it last year” in areas such as the fight against corruption, judicial independence or respect for the judges. He also analyzes the European resolutions on amnesty, defends the separation of powers and demands “the absolute disconnection of the Office of the State Attorney General from the Executive” as the most urgent reform. After lamenting the “colonization of institutions” and the attacks on judges, he warns that the filters of the separation of powers are being removed and concludes that “this is the beginning of any authoritarian state”.

What is his assessment of the EU’s State of the Rule of Law Report this year?

First, one must understand that the report is an annual examination of the rule of law. The rule of law is a very broad concept.

Unfortunately, in Spain today all citizens know what it is or have a roughly close idea. Ten years ago nobody cared about it. That clearly shows there is a problem.

The Commission’s report must be compared with those of previous years and also placed in the context of other countries. It cannot be understood without comparison.

What we have seen in the last five years, especially in the last two, are reports that, within Brussels’ language, are devastating. Not only do they call for reforms regarding judicial independence or, in Spain’s case, the situation of the Attorney General and the General Council of the Judiciary, but they also use language that one must learn to read. In the reforms of the CGPJ or in corruption issues, for example, they employ very blunt terms for Brussels’ standards.

“What we have seen in the last five years, especially in the last two, are reports that, within Brussels’ language, are devastating”

One must understand that Brussels is not the Europe police, but it is the one that must alert impartially about what happens in each member state. And this report, to date, puts us on par with Hungary. Many outlets in the Brussels bubble were publishing yesterday that the two worst reports in terms of corruption were Hungary’s and Spain’s.

More specifically, in that comparison on corruption, what concerns you most?

I think the headline of the report is that nothing at all has been done of what was asked last year. That is the headline.

Obviously, the Commission also does not have the capacity to intervene very effectively in member states, because that is not its job. But it has been repeatedly urging the Spanish Government to make progress in the fight against corruption, in judicial independence and, above all, in respect for the judiciary and for the media.

“The Commission does not have the capacity to intervene very effectively in member states, because that is not its job”

In those three areas it clearly states that there has been no progress. In some cases it notes a small improvement, for example regarding the Attorney General, but it does so simply because there is a legislative proposal that has not even passed the Congress or the Senate.

Sabemos that it is impossible for that proposal to pass because the Government does not have a legislative majority. The Commission knows this as well. Therefore, my headline would be: “You have done absolutely nothing of what you were asked last year.”
 

The other major development in this field is the Court of Justice’s two rulings on amnesty. The People’s Party has positioned itself by legally accepting the rulings, though it remains politically opposed. How do you assess that?

First, one must understand well that what the CJEU has done is resolve a question referred by the Spanish court—a prejudicial question. In other words, it has merely resolved a doubt from the Spanish jurisdiction regarding the European rule. It has not evaluated the amnesty law as a whole, nor has it ruled on whether it is compatible with Spanish legality, no matter how many media outlets present it that way.

Secondly, this ruling is not the end of the road. It remains the national courts that have the authority to apply national law and determine its applicability to a specific case.

“The CJEU has not evaluated the amnesty law as a whole, nor has it ruled on its compatibility with Spanish legality”

This is part of the entire process surrounding the amnesty law, which essentially is a law tailor-made to keep a certain person in power with seven votes, and in which the Court has not chosen to intervene. But it is also true that there are two other prejudicial questions pending that would address a possible violation of the rule of law.

The resolutions now known refer to the Court of Auditors’ prejudicial question on embezzlement, and to the one related to the Terrorism Directive affecting the CDRs. There are two other prejudicial questions still pending that touch much more on the dimension of the rule of law.

I am not saying they will go in another direction, nor do I think they will. All I am saying is that they have issued an opinion that we fully respect.

We are not like other parties who point fingers at judges. We respect them. But, on a more personal level, I know the Court of Justice of the European Union very well because I have heard from it every year during my time as former president of the Legal Affairs Committee and now as a member, and you can sense a certain slide when considering what a pro-European government is and what a non-pro-European government is.

That kind of case-by-case interpretation, depending on the government in each member state, will age poorly.

In his personal career, the relationship with Catalonia, amnesty and, in general, the independence movement has been very intense. Some interpretations suggest that amnesty could politically favor the PP by smoothing the path to a possible future understanding with Junts, something some consider inevitable. What is your view of that reading?

The only possible meeting between the PP and any other Spanish party requires respect for the Constitution and the laws we have all agreed upon. If that respect does not exist, there can be no meeting.

“The only possible meeting between the PP and any other Spanish party depends on respecting the Constitution and the laws we have all agreed upon”

If it exists, majorities are decided by the people through their votes. A serious, responsible political party with a state-and-country mindset must work with an understanding of what people decide and vote, but it must maintain a red line: respect for the Constitution.

How should the relationship between the executive and the judiciary be managed?

I don’t think it should be “managed.” What must be done is to respect the separation of the spheres of action of each branch of the state. The legislative has certain powers; the executive, others; and the judiciary, still others. They are connected, obviously, but if we have an executive that does not respect judicial decisions, we slide into a drift in which the separation of powers, the cornerstone of any democratic state, begins to falter.

If the interpretation to be made is the opposite — that there exists a judiciary that blocks the legislative and the executive — I would ask what common, linear and homogeneous interests the entire Spanish judiciary has. Do all judges and prosecutors think the same? Do they all share a political agenda?

Take, for example, the latest cases involving the president’s circle. In the case of his brother, the Provincial Court of Badajoz has issued a unanimous resolution. Now, for instance, the Provincial Court of Madrid has likewise ruled unanimously that there are indications of possible crimes for having exploited the position of power of his husband in the case of the president’s wife.

There is a segment of the press —and this is the most worrisome part, because it is what the governing party is trying to foster—that wants to tell us that all the state’s judicial bodies are lined up against the Government.

Is that possible? Is it viable? Is it really credible? Or is there instead a Governo’s interest in controlling and pointing fingers? This is, by the way, what the State of the Rule of Law report notes: the enormous rise in complaints by all judicial associations about executive interference in their work.

Can a particular judge have an agenda? Certainly. But that, case after case, there being unanimity or a broad majority in a defined legal opinion about the possibility of applying amnesty… one cannot expect people to believe that there is a political agenda behind everything.

“The report notes the enormous rise in complaints from all judicial associations about pressures to influence their decisions”

There is no catching that and the Commission did not believe it either. In fact, one of the issues the report emphasizes most is the enormous concern about that labeling and about the increase in complaints from all judicial associations regarding government interference in their work.

In Agenda Pública we published an article analyzing the ideological relationship of citizen trust in justice. In Spain, those with more conservative ideologies tend to trust the judicial system more. However, that pattern is not reproduced in all countries: in Austria or Germany, for example, the more left-leaning a person is, the greater the trust they express. Does this paradigm exist in other countries, or is it a specifically Spanish phenomenon?

Note that this single question, for me, defines how the Government has managed to inject ideological language into justice. Even those who work in the media fall into it, because we try to define an ideology within the judicial system. That is the starting point.

I’m not referring to the judges’ personal ideology, but to the public’s perception. It’s a question that has appeared in the European Social Survey questionnaires since 2002.

But previously this public debate did not exist. It was not publicly discussed whether judges were left or right.

Once you start defining judges as belonging to one side or the other, you begin to erode judicial independence. When a decision you don’t like is taken, you say the judge is right-wing or left-wing. This is how you undermine the system and the rule of law because you begin to cast doubt on the judges themselves.

And if this is done by the Government or the Prime Minister, we are already facing the start of a very worrying drift. It is as if now I were being asked whether I think the European Court of Justice is left-wing because of what it has said about amnesty. I cannot accept that. It is a court. To me, it has no ideology. Its first task is to apply the law, whether it is the Civil Code, the Penal Code or whatever rule applies.

Turning the debate to the ideology of the judiciary is the beginning of the system’s deterioration.

I keep insisting: the fact that this has become a debate is what endangers the system. It is a debate that has taken on this dimension because a prime minister has decided to bring it into the public sphere. This has never happened before.

“Turning the debate to the ideology of the judiciary is the beginning of the system’s deterioration”

In some Eastern European countries there is the opposite perception because a large part of their judges came from the communist system and later re-trained in the democratic system. They were judges appointed by a communist regime. There, yes, this debate exists in reverse.

In Spain something similar might have been said in the eighties due to the Francoist legacy. But a long time has passed and the judicial system has regenerated completely.

To me, merely opening this debate already carries a danger. People are not aware of how dangerous it is.

You have said that Spain has not implemented any of the recommendations the Commission made last year. If you could adopt only one measure to make sure the next report shows Spain moving in the right direction, which would you choose?

If it is only one, I would choose the absolute disconnection of the Office of the Attorney General from the Executive. For a simple reason: if you look at all corruption cases around Mr. Sánchez, in all of them the Attorney General’s Office has absolutely lost its good name.

Why? Because it has followed a political line, even in cases where there are later unanimous decisions by a whole court. They have wrecked the reputation of the Office of the Attorney General.

“The first thing I would do would be to strip the Executive of the power to appoint the Attorney General, because that is corrupting the system”

We have the first Attorney General in the history of the state who has been disqualified and convicted. So the first thing I would do would be to strip the Executive of the power to appoint the Attorney General, because that is corrupting the system.

I would do many more things, but that would be the first.

So this is a concern about trust in the system.

Of course. I return to your previous question about whether judges are right- or left-leaning and the public’s perception of a more conservative or more progressive judiciary. In the end, that perception generates distrust in the judiciary.

“If in a democracy you sow doubts and distrust about the judiciary, everything shakes”

If in a democracy you sow doubts and distrust about the judiciary, everything shakes. We must understand that it is the last frontier that allows us to live under rules of common respect that we have all agreed upon. If you decide to skip them because you want to stay in government for four more years and you invent a law precisely to achieve that; or because you think your circle—be it your wife or your brother—could benefit from your position of power; or you colonize institutions like the CIS or Radiotelevisión Española, which also appears in the State of the Rule of Law report, where there is a great concern about the editorial line of the public radio and television; and, in addition, you attack the judges, you are removing all the checks that guarantee the balance between the three powers.

That is the beginning of any authoritarian state. That is how it starts.

Thank you very much.