“Many things” are going to happen before the date of April 24 arrives, MEP Clara Ponsatí said today in Brussels when asked if she plans to appear before Judge Pablo Llarena that day, who has summoned her to testify for its role in the 1-O referendum. “There is a judge in Madrid who really wants to talk to me, I don’t particularly want to talk to any judge,” Ponsati declared minutes before entering the plenary session of the European Parliament accompanied by Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín, among other MEPs, in addition to a cloud of reporters, less than 24 hours after appearing by surprise in Barcelona.
Ponsatí has ??denounced the “irregular” situation that implies that a MEP is arrested within the European Union and has criticized that the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, who was immediately informed of her arrest, has not done anything to defend her. “We asked him to act in defense of parliamentary immunity and so far he has not done so. It is a very unfortunate situation that leaves the European Parliament in a very bad place,” emphasized the former minister, who was arrested mid-afternoon yesterday in the capital Catalan by a plainclothes mosso, who led her to testify. Asked if her return to Barcelona yesterday is part of an electoral strategy, she has denied it. “Nothing is further from reality,” she said.
At the beginning of the session, the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, announced that she had sent the petition made by Ponsatí to defend her parliamentary immunity in Spain to the chamber’s legal committee. This forum, chaired by the MEP Adrián Vázquez (C’s), is the same one that two years ago agreed to the request of the Spanish judge to lift the legal protection that her seat offers her to be able to answer before the courts for the accusations against her .
On the other hand, asked by the press, the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, said he was aware of the MEP’s arrest and announced that his services are going to verify her “exact situation” although he recalled that there assumptions in which it would be legal.
“There are provisions that allow arrests to be made. There have been several arrests in various cases of both national parliamentarians and European parliamentarians,” said Reynders, who has distanced himself from Ponsati’s statements, who has presented his arrest as a violation of the state of law that the European Commission should examine in its annual report on Spain. “On the more particular situation in Spain, we have already published three reports on the rule of law”, the last one with “a particular recommendation on the renewal of the CGPJ and the reform that must be done” but “they are two totally separate things”, Reynders has said, regarding the situation of Catalan politicians.
