The European Parliament does not leave the accounts. Spain has the right, according to the treaties, to 59 of the 750 seats in the institution. And, “however, since the European elections of May 26, 2019, the Kingdom of Spain has only notified 55 officially elected candidates”, the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, is surprised in the letter sent to the president of the Board Central Electoral on September 22 inquiring about this mismatch.
The impossibility of the Legal Affairs Commission, chaired by Adrián Vázquez (Citizens), to carry out the process of verifying credentials has been what, formally, has led the institution to contact Spain to clarify the situation of former President Carles Puigdemont and former ministers Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, who did not attend Congress to swear or promise the Spanish Constitution; Jordi Solé (ERC) is also in the same situation, although unlike the Junts politicians, he has no pending cases with the Spanish courts.
In his letter, to which La Vanguardia has had access, Metsola reminds Spain that “it has a duty of loyal cooperation with the European Parliament” which implies, among other things, “the obligation to notify a complete list of officially elected deputies to in order to allow the European Parliament to carry out its function with the total number of its members”. “I invite the Kingdom of Spain to designate without delay the number of people corresponding to the number of seats that have been assigned to it,” concludes the President of the European Parliament, a member of the European People’s Party.
In reality, if Puigdemont, Comín, Ponsatí and Solé are serving as MEPs, it is due to a decision, of a political nature, adopted by that same institution. Although the first reaction of the European Parliament when they were elected was to deny them access to their seat for not having completed the planned national procedures, when the Italian Social Democrat David Sassoli, who died in January, resolved, relying on a December 2019 ruling on the situation of Oriol Junqueras, allowing them to assume their duties as MEPs.
That exception, agreed by the European Parliament itself, is the one that the same institution now proposes should be clarified. As Metsola recalls in the first paragraph of his letter, the sentence of July 6, 2022 of the General Court of the EU ruled that it dismissed the appeal filed by Puigdemont and Comín against the initial decision of the European Parliament not to allow them to take their seat, ” establishes a division of powers between Parliament and the Member States”. That sentence emphasizes that, to check the credentials, “Parliament must base itself on the list of officially elected candidates notified by the national authorities, which, by definition, is drawn up based on the officially proclaimed results and once these authorities have resolved the possible controversies arising in relation to the application of national law”.
Consulted by this newspaper, Gonzalo Boyé, Puigdemont’s lawyer, has expressed his surprise that Metsola is now questioning his situation, especially when the European Parliament is involved in a case before the EU Court of Justice in which he defends his decision to lift the immunity of MEPs because it has “assumed” that it is what they are. “Mrs. Metsola will know what she is getting into but she could be tremendously surprised” in Luxembourg, says Boyé, who has his sights set on the oral hearing that will be held on November 25 in the Court of Justice of the EU on the request. “Now they come with the fact that they have realized that they are not MEPs? How is the institution, which has been paying their salaries for three years?”
The Central Electoral Board will respond to the European Parliament that it cannot issue credentials to those who do not meet the requirements established by Spanish law, one of which is to abide by the Constitution in Madrid before the JEC itself, reports Europa Press. The arbitration body plans to study the document sent by the European Parliament at its meeting on Thursday, November 3, and its intention is not to limit itself to providing a list of names, but to recall the entire Spanish procedure and recall the reasons why it does not consider it pertinent. issue credentials to those who do not meet all the formal requirements.
In the event that the Central Electoral Board informs the European Parliament that it cannot endorse the credentials of the four affected MEPs, parliamentary sources suggest that the next step would be to carry out a new legal analysis in the institution to eventually study the possible suspension of their rights. and prerogatives as members of the institution or, depending on the response of the Electoral Board, run the list so that other people assume the seats in question. The tangle of judicial cases pending resolution could advise the institution to wait a while longer before acting, other sources from the institution point out, especially since the July sentence has been appealed by Puigdemont. For the moment, the four deputies continue to carry out their parliamentary duties normally.
