11 de gen. 2021

Please stand up for EU values

Here is the full text of the letter I have sent to members of the EP Commission on Legal Affairs ("JURI") regarding the requests for waiver of the immunity of three Catalan MEPs, whose freedom of movement throughout the EU has nevertheless been guaranteed by High Court decisions in Germany and Belgium. 

Click , if need be, to read the full text.

Dear Member of the European Parliament,

I recently read about the violations of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary and their attempts to hold up the EU budget.

I have also read elsewhere that the EU says it is committed to applying the same yardstick as regards non-compliance with the rule of law in all EU member States.

The European Parliament recently chose to censor the issue of Spain, in connection to its ham-fisted treatment of the Catalonia-Spain conflict, from the report by Clare Daly MEP, rapporteur of a European Parliament report on fundamental rights in the Union.

Given that there is a great deal of subjectivity, and differing points of view, and also that Spain’s diplomacy and high-ranking officials in the EU have managed to powerfully transmit its own, allow me to draw your attention to several recent, unquestionable violations of the rule of law.

The European Union Court of Justice ruled last year that Oriol Junqueras enjoyed the rights of immunity that his election as an MEP granted him, as soon as his election was officially announced. However, the Spanish authorities neither released him from gaol (for organizing a referendum in Catalonia, which was dropped from Spain’s criminal code in 2005)1 nor requested that the European Parliament waive his immunity.

In 2018 the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgment2 that declared void a Spanish court ruling that had sent a Basque MP to prison for six years – which he had served in full before the ECHR decision - , because one of the judges was not impartial. A review of the judgment, or a retrial, are prerrogatives that can only be legally exercised at the request of the applicant. Notwithstanding this, at the request of a private organization the Spanish Supreme Court has recently ordered a retrial.

In 2018 a social activist3 was arrested near Barcelona and whisked off to Madrid to be charged with terrorism among other offences. She was confined to her own municipality for months, not being able even to visit her aged mother, until finally a Barcelona court dropped all charges against her.4

In 2019 the former Catalan minister of the Interior, along with other members of his government, was sentenced to a ten and a half year prison term, for his handling of the police during the 2017 acts of «sedition». (Amnesty International soon criticed the verdict5 and called for the release of all the political prisoners). Yet a recent court ruling6, not appealed by the public prosecutor, has acquitted both the police chief and the top ministry officials, who were found not guilty of any illegality during the events of 2017.

Late in 2020, the Spanish Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision to bar him from office, for ignoring, temporarily, an election board notification calling on him to remove two banners, with yellow ribbons, which called first for the freeing of the Catalan political prisoners (as international organisations have done, and then in favour of the freedom of speech (a right proclaimed by the United Nations), in a decision described as grossly disproportionate.

And on January 7 2021, the appeal on behalf of Spain against a Brussels court's decision to deny the extradition of Catalonia's former Minister of Culture to face charges in Spain, was also rejected by the Court of Appeal7, given (among other reasons) serious doubts about his possibility to enjoy the right to a fair trial and the fact that the former Minister, Sr. Lluís Puig, would not be tried by a competent court.

Note that despite calls for their immediate release from detention prior to their trial, from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Amnesty International and a wide range of legal associations, their colleagues in the Catalan government were sentenced by the Supreme Court (without, therefore, the right to appeal to a higher Spanish court) to prison for 9 to 13 years, for committing “sedition”, that is, for political actions – legitimate under international law - that cannot not, as courts in Belgium and Germany have ratified, be classified as criminal offences.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is the lack of assurance of a fair trial, for doings that are not offences in other European countries, that has six Catalan politicians and several activists living in exile in Belgium, Switzerland and Scotland. This is on all accounts a shocking state of affairs, and many in Catalonia – and not just those in favour of the 27 October 2017 declaration of independence being fully implemented – complain of the total passivity of the European institutions, compared to their public stance on events in, say, Turkey and Byelorussia. Both Antoni Comin MEP and prof. Clara Ponsatí MEP have highlighted their hypocritical situation in the plenary very recently.

Note also that the Committee for Legal Affairs of which you are a member has an inordinate number of Spanish members, whose sudden interest in joining this committee is precisely, I venture to believe, to achieve the waiver of the immunity of three Catalan MEPs, and to whom it is, I fear, pointless to send this letter.

I write to you to offer further information on these and other cases, and to bear them in mind (and especially the January 2021 Brussels Court of Appeal judgment), if and when the time comes for you as a member of the Committee for Legal Affairs (JURI), to vote a report on Spain's request for the waver of the parliamentary immunity of your colleagues, Carles Puigdemont MEP8, Antoni Comin MEP9 and Prof. Clara Ponsatí MEP10. Note that pressure from Spanish MEPs has prevented them from joining any EP group.

If you would like this letter in your language, please give me an address to send it to you.


Yours sincerely,

8 2020/2031(IMM). Request for waver [sic] of the immunity of Carles Puigdemont i Casamajó MEP. https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=en&reference=2020/2024(IMM)

9 2020/2031(IMM). Request for the waiver of the immunity of Clara Ponsatí Obiols MEP. https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=en&reference=2020/2031(IMM

10 2020/2025(IMM). Request for waver [sic] of the immunity of Antoni Comín i Oliveres MEP. https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/fi cheprocedure.do?lang=en&reference=2020/2025(IMM)

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See also: Gallardo, Cristina (2020). "Parliament launches process to waive immunity of Catalan MEPs Carles Puigdemont and Antoni Comín face charges in Spain over a failed regional secessionist push". Político, 16 January 2020. https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-catalan-meps-immunity/

 

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