The PSOE together with its parliamentary partners, including Junts, have managed to carry out the eight partial amendments agreed between PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Bildu and BNG, to the Amnesty bill, while the initiatives that the post-convergents and the Republicans presented by Separately, they remain up in the air and will be debated next week in the Justice Commission or in the plenary session of Congress.
This is what they voted for in the presentation of the Justice commission. By 20 votes to 17, seven of the agreed amendments have been included in the initial text. The eighth has finally gone ahead but only by 18 votes, after the abstention of ERC and EH Bildu.
This amendment, the 43rd, deals with the effects of criminal responsibility and the immediate release of anyone granted amnesty who was in prison. The amendment states that the application of the amnesty is the responsibility of the court that is hearing the case at that time.
Only eight of the 46 amendments proposed have been agreed between the PSOE and other parties. Junts had not previously supported these corrections although in the presentation it finally did support them.
Carles Puigdemont’s party has supported the eight agreed amendments although in this first procedure none of the twelve that his party had presented alone have gone ahead.
However, next Tuesday the new text will be debated in the Justice commission and the rejected amendments may remain alive to try to include them before the plenary session.
ERC has taken issue with the fact that the amendments it presented alone have not been incorporated into the presentation. Marta Vilalta, spokesperson and deputy general secretary of the Republicans, recalled that the text of the law already includes cases of terrorism that, according to her, would be amnestied.
Even so, the Catalan leader has started from a premise: “The independence movement has not committed any crime of terrorism.” And it has justified Esquerra, and also Junts, opting to eliminate the exclusion in the amnesty of those cases that have a final ruling, arguing that what they are trying to do is “improve the law” to have “more legal certainty” and not give rise to there are resources once the standard is approved.
According to parliamentary sources, during the presentation the chief lawyer in charge of the second report that questioned the constitutionality of the amnesty, Piedad García-Escudero, called attention to the Vox party for the accusations of having hidden the report until the 16th. despite having a signature on the 10th.
The lawyer explained that the reports are delivered to the commission spokespersons on the day the deadline for submitting partial amendments ends, regardless of the date on which it was finalized and signed. According to the technique, that is the way to proceed, categorically denying the accusations of Santiago Abascal’s party of having hidden the report.
Even so, the presentation has rejected the observations included in the report regarding doubts about the constitutionality of the law. It has only taken into consideration four technical points, among them, that the text does not include the final provision of “entry into force” and three other formal corrections to the provisions.
Among the amendments agreed upon by PSOE, ERC, Sumar and Bildu, a new perimeter is included that defines who can be affected by the amnesty; users of social networks and the media as beneficiaries of the measure and the elimination of the records of those people amnestied. Crimes against the international community would be left out.
All the amendments proposed by the PP, such as those proposed alone by the Catalan Republicans and Junts, have been rejected. In any case, they remain alive and negotiations can continue in the coming days, the post-convergents allege.
The party led by Puigdemont seeks mainly through its twelve amendments to protect the application of the amnesty for the former president automatically as soon as it comes into force. It demands immediate and unrestricted application, in particular freedom of movement, to allow the former president to return to Spain without having to wait for appeals or issues raised by the courts. Although they have been rejected today, there is still time to negotiate their inclusion during the Justice Commission next week or during the plenary session at the end of this month of January.
They also propose that appeals before the Constitutional Court or preliminary ruling questions before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) cannot be suspended. Currently, European jurisprudence dictates that once the issue is raised, the processes are paralyzed, which could delay the effectiveness of the amnesty for months or even years.
Among the four amendments presented by ERC alone is the return of administrative fines for the ‘gag law’. Although the two pro-independence parties have not been able to agree to present joint amendments, they have agreed on some.
Both parties agree that the resources are not suspensive as well as removing terrorism crimes among those excluded from the amnesty. For now, the PSOE has not wanted to give in in this section due to the risk of contravening European law. However, for these two formations it is key that they withdraw due to the Tsunami Democràtic cause due to the unrest in Catalonia as a result of the procés ruling handed down by the Supreme Court in 2019, which is in the National Court and in which they are accused. Puigdemont and the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, among others. The current proposal only talks about leaving out terrorism cases with a final sentence.
