TIME TO STAND UP FOR EU VALUES (EN)

TIME TO STAND UP FOR EU VALUES

We recently read about violations of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary and their attempts to hold up the EU budget, and about the EU's commitment to applying the same yardstick as regards non-compliance with the rule of law in all member States. However, Spain has been kept out of the public eye, thanks to EP censorship in the report by Clare Daly MEP on fundamental rights in the Union, and to high-ranking officials in the EU and diplomats who have managed to powerfully transmit Spain’s own narrative.

However, the European Union Court of Justice ruling that Catalonia’s former vice president Oriol Junqueras enjoyed the rights of immunity that his election as an MEP granted him was totally ignored by the Spanish authorities and he is serving a 13-year prison term.

In 2018 a social activist was arrested for calling for participation in a demonstration and charged with terrorism. Yet two years later, after months of confinement to her own town, a Barcelona court dropped all charges.

In 2019 the former Catalan minister of the Interior (along with other colleagues and social leaders) was sentenced to over ten years in prison, for having controlled the Catalan police during the 2017 «sedition». Yet both the police chief and top ministry officials were recently found not guilty of any misdemeanour during those events by another court. The public prosecutor did not appeal 

Calls for the immediate release of the political prisoners, issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Amnesty International and a host of legal associations, have been ignored by Spain’s vindictive structures.

In 2020, the Spanish court tossed Catalan politics into turmoil by barring Quim Torra the President of Catalonia from public office, for not immediately “obeying” an election board notification that ordered him to remove two banners calling for the freeing of the Catalan political prisoners and in favour of the freedom of speech.

And recently, a Belgian court of appeal denied the extradition of Catalonia's former Minister of Culture to Spain, given serious doubts about his possibility to enjoy the right to a fair trial.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is the lack of assurance of a fair trial, for deeds 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 a shocking situation, and many in Catalonia complain of the total passivity of the European institutions, compared to their public stance on events in, say, Russia, Turkey and Byelorussia.

This is the context of the European Parliament forthcoming vote on Spain's request for the waiver of three members’ parliamentary immunity: former President Carles Puigdemont and his ministers Antoni Comin and Clara Ponsatí.

Michael Strubell