European justice yesterday stripped Carles Puigdemont of the legal shield that, since his election as MEP, has allowed him to evade the action of the Supreme Court.
The General Court of the European Union (TGUE) dismissed yesterday the appeals brought by Puigdemont and two of his advisers, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, against the decisions of the European Parliament to suspend their immunity in response to the petition sent in 2020 by investigating judge of the 1-O, Pablo Llarena. The sentence, which can be appealed before the Court of Justice of the EU, opens the door for the Supreme Court to once again issue arrest and extradition orders to try to try them in Spain.
The European judges dismiss “all the reasons formulated by the three deputies”, the sentence states, specifically their allegations that the EP erred in not appreciating that the process was initiated “with the intention of damaging the activity of the deputies” , affirms in response to the arguments of the defense of Puigdemont, who spoke of “political persecution” against the Catalan representatives.
The sentence states that, in order to accept the petition in March 2021, “the EP was based on several elements”, including that “the alleged acts had been committed in 2017, while the deputies acquired the status of members of the Parliament” in June 2019, as well as the fact that the three were prosecuted in March 2018, when “the acquisition of the status of MEP was hypothetical”.
Contrary to what is defended by Puigdemont’s lawyers, the TGUE states that “it is not up to Parliament to analyze the legality of Spanish judicial acts, since this matter is the exclusive competence of the national authorities”. The European judges, finally, also reject that the Eurochamber does not act with due impartiality just because the speaker of the petition’s report, the Bulgarian Angel Dzhambazki, belongs to the political group of the European Conservatives and Reformists, in which Vox is a member.
This condition “is in principle irrelevant for the appreciation of his impartiality”, since even though by definition a deputy is not politically neutral “he still acts within the framework of a parliamentary commission in which the composition reflects the “balance of political groups in Parliament”. He also does not see it as irregular that the Legal Affairs committee that managed the pleading organized the three files in a single case. In addition, in a second decision also known yesterday, the TGUE considers inadmissible the appeal presented against the refusal of the President of the European Parliament to defend his parliamentary immunity in 2019.
MEP Adrián Vázquez, from Ciutadans, who chairs the Legal Affairs Committee that processed the response to the petition, yesterday celebrated the decision of the European Court of Justice. “It confirms what we knew, that the process of lifting the immunity has been impeccable and has been done with all the guarantees”, said Vázquez, who regretted, however, that it was European justice that did it ” the work that the Government of Spain did not want to do”, which did not appeal the decision of the EP to give Puigdemont, Comín and Pontsatí MEPs.
In addition to appealing the decision, the ex-president’s defense will ask for the granting of “precautionary measures” once again to prevent him from being arrested in the time that passes until there is a final sentence, although he has not clarified when he will do so . His lawyers claim that this pleading is no longer valid, as it refers to the arrest and surrender order number that was withdrawn at the beginning of the year by Llarena following the reform of the Penal Code. In his opinion, therefore, they should start the procedure from scratch in the Eurochamber, once a new arrest and surrender order has been issued, a theory that the Supreme Court does not share.
