Junts MEP Toni Comín has filed a new appeal before the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in the new battle against the European Parliament for the refusal to recognize him as an MEP. The parliamentarian filed a new lawsuit this Thursday against the decision of the president, Roberta Metsola. The move comes after in mid-August the Luxembourg court rejected the precautionary measures that Comín had requested in July to annul the decision that had left him without participating in the constitutive session of the European Parliament in which the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission.
Metsola decided to leave Toni Comín without a seat at the beginning of the legislature after the Central Electoral Commission left the position vacant because the pro-independence candidate had not come to promise the Constitution, which he considers an essential requirement based on Spanish legislation despite the contrary decision of the European Court in the case of Oriol Junqueras. This judgment of December 2019 led to the recognition as MEPs of Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín (this had no effect on the leader of the ERC, already disqualified in the trial of the process).
On this occasion, the President of the European Parliament decided to follow the criteria of the Spanish Central Electoral Commission – and not those of the CJEU – and to wait to make a final decision from 26 September, the date on which the CJEU will rule on the cases of Puigdemont and Comín in 2019.
Comín tried to reverse Metsola’s decision before the plenary session held in Strasbourg in mid-July by presenting precautionary measures before the CJEU in the context of this already open procedure. However, the judges did not rule before this parliamentary session and, in any case, they rejected the petition on 19 August in a letter in which they essentially argue that the petition is limited to a cause different from the facts currently being discussed. have produced.
Following the rejection of these interim measures, Comín filed a new appeal before the CJEU against Metsola’s decision to leave it without a seat by opening new proceedings.
However, the European Parliament’s intention was to follow the criteria established by the CJEU in this new judgment of 26 September. The Advocate General joined Puigdemont and Comín when he considered that the European Parliament had erred in leaving them without seats after the 2019 elections. “The President of the European Parliament, on the one hand, questioned the officially proclaimed electoral results, despite the fact that Parliament was bound by the proclamation of 13 June 2019, which was the official proclamation of the results. On the contrary, its President chose to follow up on the subsequent notifications from the Spanish authorities, which did not faithfully and completely reflect those results,” the lawyer said.
The lawyers’ decisions are not binding on Luxembourg judges, but they tend to uphold their judgment in a significant percentage of cases. The lawyer considered that the “suspension” of Puigdemont and Comín was a violation of EU law, as he claims that “no provision of this law authorises a Member State to suspend the prerogatives of Members of the European Parliament”.
Parliamentary sources, however, specify that if the CJEU follows the criteria of the Advocate General, it will be necessary for Spain to modify its electoral law so as not to impose on MEPs, once elected at the polls, the obligation to take possession of their minutes.
