Catalan independence yesterday entered a new phase of open conflict with Europe in response to the indifference with which the community institutions have reacted to the arrest and release of MEP Clara Ponsatí (Junts) on Tuesday in Barcelona, ??where she traveled to surprise after more than five years abroad, a visit during which she was brought to testify for her role in the 1-O.
“Neither the Council, nor the European Commission, nor the presidency of the European Parliament reacted and even less did they ask for my release, as the occasion required”, criticized the MEP from Junts, already back in Brussels, at the opening of the plenary session of the Eurochamber. Ponsatí charged the European Union in general for being, he said, “a club of states” that protect each other instead of defending their citizens but had particularly harsh words for the Speaker of the Chamber, Roberta Metsola (PPE), to tolerate the “flagrant violation” of her parliamentary immunity when she was arrested and asked for protection.
“I did not receive any response from him and as far as I know he has not taken any action except, as he has just announced, to pass the case to the Legal Affairs Committee” of the Parliament, an exit that he described as “bureaucratic” and that it is not up to what they asked of it, a closed and immediate defense of its rights as a parliamentarian. “I wonder if this failure to comply with an illegal arrest of an MEP, which has never happened before, is a response to a policy of the presidency, or is it an attitude that is reserved for us, the Catalans?” throw Ponsatí
The accusations of the Catalan MEP, repeated by Diana Riba (ERC), did not go down well with Metsola. “I guess you didn’t hear my announcement at the beginning of the session,” he told them. The Eurochamber will, in effect, assess whether Ponsatí’s immunity was violated by being arrested in Spain. But the path chosen is not what Carles Puigdemont and his colleagues were asking for. Metsola has responded to Ponsatí’s request following the ordinary procedure, article 9 of the regulation, instead of 8, the one provided for urgent situations and which, if it had been used, would have led him to request an urgent legal opinion and to pronounce immediately on the case.
It was the legal service of the Eurochamber who advised the president to opt for this route. “The urgency disappears from the moment the judge lets her go and even leave the country”, parliamentary sources point out. The fact that Ponsatí was released, that she can travel freely and that the events she is accused of happened before 2019 are some of the factors that have been taken into account in the reaction to the arrest of the ex-counselor, add other parliamentary sources, who note that “immunities are a complicated matter” and “vary depending on the Member State”.
Ponsatí’s initial intervention, after an event commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreements that brought peace to Northern Ireland, led other Catalan MPs to react. “You think that this is the Parliament of Catalonia, where they do what they want, but this is the European Parliament and here democracy is defended against those who trample on it, here we all know that you are fugitives from justice”. reacted Dolors Monserrat (PP). “It’s enough of so much secessionist theater, of electoral numbers yesterday in Barcelona, ??of selling ourselves as victims”.
Jordi Cañas (C’s) asked to speak to support the decision taken by Metsola and to ask him to avoid political debates “contrary” to the principles they had just defended in the act on peace in Northern Ireland. “I would like this chamber not to be used to make a political show that I think at a time like this, after speaking what we have spoken, degrades and does not suit” the institution. He closed the impromptu debate, with Ursula von der Leyen (Commission) and Charles Michel (European Council) present in the chamber, Riba, who asked Metsola to defend Ponsati and ask Spain to “once and for all comply the European legality and abandoned ‘Judicial Brexit’ in which it has settled”.