Currently, the General Council of the INE is made up of these eleven councillors – including the president – with the right to speak and vote, but also another 11 or 12 spaces occupied by representatives of the political parties, plus councillors of the Legislative Branch, who are legislators representing the Parliamentary Groups of the Chambers of Deputies and the Senate, all of them without the right to vote.
However, the reform to the Judicial Branch – in force since Monday, September 16 – orders that “the counselors of the Legislative Branch and the representatives of the political parties before the General Council may not participate in the actions, activities and sessions related to this process.”
That is why the General Council unanimously approved, in an urgent extraordinary session held on the evening of Thursday, September 19, changes to its internal rules so that they cannot participate in the sessions.
It also established that in such sessions neither the parties nor the Legislative Branch advisers may include or remove matters from the agenda.