Oversight bodies without politicians: a radical-centre plan to depoliticise Spain's watchdogs

One of the clearest demands in Miriam González's launch speech for Democracia 21 was to make the institutions that control the government independent of the parties. Spain has a family of such bodies: the Court of Audit, which audits public accounts and party finances; AIReF, the independent fiscal authority that checks the budget; the Ombudsman; the Transparency Council; the competition authority. Each was created to watch power. In each case the people being watched have a large say in who does the watching.

How Spain chooses its watchdogs today

The Court of Audit, the Tribunal de Cuentas, has twelve councillors. Under Organic Law 2/1982, the Congress elects six and the Senate six, each by a three-fifths majority, for nine years. Candidates must be auditors, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, economists or senior officials with more than fifteen years of experience. On paper that is a demanding, consensual system. In practice a three-fifths majority in Spain usually requires an agreement between the two big parties, which then negotiate the names between them.

AIReF works differently. Organic Law 6/2013 gives the Council of Ministers the power to appoint its president, on the finance minister's proposal. The candidate appears before a Congress committee, which has to endorse the choice by absolute majority; if it does not act within fifteen days, a simple majority of the Senate committee is enough. The president serves a single six-year term. The design has real strengths, including the single term. The weak point showed this year. When the government proposed a senior Finance Ministry official to succeed Cristina Herrero, Herrero herself criticised the single-candidate process and asked for a more democratic procedure in which Parliament could see several profiles, as Forbes España reported in March 2026.

The European Commission's 2025 Rule of Law Report adds more weak points. The Office for Conflicts of Interest is still integrated into the government's structure, and sanctions on senior officials are still decided by the Council of Ministers. The Transparency Council lacks the means to make its binding decisions stick. Spain also already has a good precedent: since 2024 nobody who has held political office in the previous five years can be appointed Attorney General, a cooling-off rule the report records.

Two ways to get this wrong

There are two failures to avoid, and they pull in opposite directions. The first is capture: watchdogs filled by loyalists, including recent politicians, who go easy on their own side. The OECD's principles for independent fiscal institutions name the trap precisely. Leaders should be selected on merit and technical competence, without reference to political affiliation, and the OECD adds that "non-partisanship should not be confused with bi-partisanship." Sharing out posts between two parties is still partisanship.

The second failure is the one this week's explainer on vetocracy describes. Raise the bar for appointments without a deadline and you invite blockades, as the five-year freeze of the judges' council showed. Give watchdogs the power to stop decisions without answering to anyone and you add another veto player to a system that already has plenty. Francis Fukuyama's frame, which we explain here, asks for a capable state, the rule of law and accountability in balance. Watchdogs belong to the accountability side, and they have to be accountable too.

The radical-centre design

The left is right that a democracy needs strong, well-resourced watchdogs that can expose abuse by governments and by the companies that deal with them. The right and the market-liberal tradition are right that such bodies should be lean, chosen on merit and judged by results, with clear mandates and no drift into policymaking. The piece that belongs to neither is the appointment procedure itself, designed so that neither capture nor deadlock is possible. We would apply one model to every oversight body.

Every vacancy opens with a public call, with the criteria published in advance. An independent selection panel assesses the candidates and publishes a shortlist of those it finds appointable. The UK's Governance Code on Public Appointments offers a working model: an advisory panel decides who is appointable, the final choice stays with an elected authority, and if that authority wants someone the panel rejected it has to justify the decision in public. In Spain the panel could include senior civil servants, academics and a judge, with no serving or recent politicians.

Parliament then chooses from the shortlist by three-fifths, after public hearings. It has three months. If it fails, the appointment passes to the panel's top-ranked candidate. Consensus is rewarded and blockade is impossible.

Anyone who has held elected office, a senior political appointment or a party leadership post in the previous five years is ineligible, extending the Attorney General rule to every watchdog. Terms are single, long and non-renewable, and staggered so that no single parliament renews a whole board.

Independence comes with accountability. Each body publishes an annual report, appears before a parliamentary committee at least once a year, and is reviewed by external peers every five years. Watchdogs inform, audit and sanction within their legal powers. They do not gain new powers to block government decisions. Those disputes go to the courts.

This answers González's demand and adds the guard rail she will need. Depoliticised watchdogs are worth having only if they can be appointed on time and remain answerable. With an open call, a panel, a deadline and a default, Spain can have both.