Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced at the time that he would use all the instruments at his disposal to oppose the amnesty. And one of these instruments is Europe. The president of the PP has taken advantage of his stay in Brussels, where yesterday he participated in the meeting of leaders of the European People’s Party (EPP), to interview the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, with whom he dealt, he said in a subsequent press conference, “the situation of the rule of law in Spain”.
And within this situation, Feijóo spoke in an almost monothematic manner about the possible amnesty that Pedro Sánchez is negotiating with the Catalan independence supporters in exchange for his investiture. An amnesty that for the popular leader is “illegal from a legal point of view, an aberration from a democratic point of view and an indecency from a moral point of view”.
The leader of the PP does not want to wait for the agreement between the PSOE and Junts to become a reality and for there to be a specific document to show rejection. The amnesty, whatever it is and whatever it is called, says the popular leader, is amnesty, and the PP will fight against it.
Europe is one of those instruments that the populists will use to try to undermine these claims. There are precedents, for example, when Romania in 2019 considered an amnesty that was finally rejected in a referendum in that country, but which the Union considered “a step back in the rule of law”.
Feijóo verified that Reynders is very aware of the situation in Spain. He confirmed to him that “not everything is worth it, in politics” and that the rule of law is not negotiable, and national integrity cannot be susceptible to being negotiable.
Feijóo explained all this not only to the commissioner, but also to his European counterparts, including the new Polish president, Donald Tusk.
He also gave the reply from Brussels to the Economic Circle, which he believes is wrong in his approach to the amnesty. Firstly, because “this amnesty is not a reconciliation, but a political transaction”, emphasized Feijóo at a press conference in Brussels.
In other words, according to Feijóo, “it does not intend that Catalan citizens can overcome the division, but it is a transaction for seven votes, so that someone can be president of the Spanish Government”, which is why the amnesty “does not deepen coexistence, but in convenience”.
According to Feijóo, none of the circumstances that the Circle defends exist, nor does it help coexistence, nor can it be the product of an agreement between the PSOE and the PP, because “it is not a State agreement, but an agreement against the “State”.
In fact, the president of the PP maintains that he has resigned “to be president in order not to give in to the amnesty and the other demands of the pro-independence parties”. In his opinion, “Sánchez is about to become president because he gives in to these conditions”.
