Ayer, Cristina Herrero, recently president of AIReF, described an idea that needs more attention than it is likely to receive in the usual political noise. She concluded that the independence of an institution is not a state that can be achieved and maintained by inertia, but rather an attitude that one has. defender of constant form, both from the direction and from within, for all who integrate it.
The phrase is one of the most widespread fictions in our democracies: which is enough to properly design an institution that will guarantee your independence. A giant tapestry for immoral politicians.
Independence is not a static quality, nor a seat of quality that is acquired once and for all. It is a balance that depends less on the formal architecture than on the effective behavior of the people who work within that architecture. When this behavior disappears, the institutional design disappears, remaining as simple decoration.
In this sense, the significance of the open debate surrounding the possible replacement of Herrera is not only the specific profile of the proposed candidate, but goes further. Elegida por el Ministerio de Hacienda es Inés Olóndriz, hasta entonces general secretary of your department.
The Hacienda commission approved it for the March final, without the unanimity that accompanied Herrera, and with the express opposition of the PP and Vox. But there is no problem here if the signal that the number is transmitting is transmitting. Because institutions operate according to regulations, but also beyond expectations.
Independence must be guaranteed and becomes a problematic expectation, sometimes considered
But this is not a problem exclusive to AIReF. It is actually a broader umbrella.
The judiciary offers a clear example. For years, the independence debate has focused on appointment mechanisms, parliamentary mayors or institutional blocs.
But more than legal engineering, there is a deeper question here: when political actors negotiate control over the institutions that are supposed to constrain them, independence must be guaranteed and becomes a problematic expectation that sometimes has to be reckoned with.
The same thing happens on the other side with the central counters. The Federal Reserve offers the clearest example. Trump spent months publicly pressuring Jerome Powell to oust him more quickly, calling him “incompetent,” urging him to produce a criminal investigation document, and by 2026 the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation against him, formally over the Fed headquarters job he had fired. Powell, as a pretext.
Powell’s answer was very clear: “Public service requires that signatures be maintained against amenazas”. The irony is that the Fed’s policy will produce the exact opposite of what Trump is seeking, which is said to be less controllable inflation at a higher level and more uncertainty for markets.
The official defense is that there is no contradiction because each state decides the energy mix
In apparently more complex areas of classical institutional debate, such as the regulation of major technologies or energy markets, the same phenomenon emerges.
The case of Teresa Riberová illustrates the same patronage from a different angle. As a minister in Spain, I will spearhead efforts to shut down Spain’s five nuclear power plants between 2027 and 2035, and I will criticize the EU’s inclusion of nuclear power in its green taxonomy.
As European Commissioner-designate, I wrote to the European Parliament in October 2024 that there are no obstacles to nuclear deployment on the continent and supported a European industrial alliance to accelerate small modular reactors. The official defense is that there is no contradiction because each state decides the energy mix.
But this answer is based on a basic question. If nuclear power is viable as a decarbonisation technology, which is what Ribera and Brussels now support, this value does not vary by reactor nationality.
The credibility of the institutions Ribera presides over is immediately called into question by the lack of personal cohesion.
In all these cases, the basic error is the same: confuse design with warranty.
We tend to think of independence, transparency, or neutrality as attributes that can be incorporated into an institution through law, statute, or regulation, when it is certain that these virtues function not as legal qualities but as practical virtues. Y, like stories, must be supported by action.
This brings an interesting and little-discussed element to the public debate because it displaces responsibility. Do not stop demanding good institutional designs for the most necessary onesnot with reference to great principles in abstracto.
The topic is how those who are called to embody these principles behave in practice when they are explicitly required to do so. Yes, anyway, the answer to unhappiness is not comforting.
Where political, professional, or reputational incentives favor proximity to power, independence must be a rational strategy for switching sides. At the moment, erosion does not require big scandals. It progresses gradually, in imperceptible cases, until the exception becomes normal.
Therefore, Herrero’s warning is directed more towards the specific case that motivates him. Point to a more challenging but much needed idea.
Independence is not only a quality of institutions, but a collective practice that requires that it be supported from within, but also from without, by public opinion, media, people, without being a direct part of these institutions, contribute to setting the standard of what is acceptable.
The institutions that vertebralize our form of life and worldview do not disappear when they are reformed until they become credible. And this is not happening like the day before. As they usually say, the first coup will happen, bit by bit, and then.
When we get used to people needing supervision, we depend on people to supervise, or when we accept as normal decisions that, if not so much, have led to problems. Es decir, cwhen we replace the need for residence.
Ultimately, independence is not determined, but exercised. Y, above all, if defiende.
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