“This is a general error. I cannot give a deeper explanation. » This is how the spokesperson for the PP, Borja Sémper, summarized this Monday the management of his groups in Congress and the Senate in the face of a legal modification which emanates from Europe and which will benefit, among others, prisoners of ETA who have served part of their mandate. their sentence abroad. The Senate postponed the reform this Tuesday, but the vote will have to take place next week and will have no effect since neither the PP, Vox nor the UPN have proposed an amendment to this effect, in either chamber legislative. A fiasco for the right which is now trying to clear the government of accusations of “deception”.
PP and Vox woke up Monday to a headline from El Confidencial that they didn’t expect: a legal reform unanimously supported in Congress would allow prisoners convicted in the EU and later in Spain to add both maximum sentences for the purposes of the charge that a person can remain in prison, according to Spanish law. A modification resulting from a European directive which had already been addressed under the government of Mariano Rajoy but which Spain has not completely transposed.
Today, an amendment by Sumar during the legislative process in Congress eliminated the additional provision that the PP once included to limit the effect of the reform and limit it to people convicted after August 15, 2010, which left alongside some of the most bloodthirsty ETAs. terrorists.
The reform of the law was born from a project by the Government, which carried it out according to the emergency procedure. In addition to reducing deadlines, this decision removes consultative reports to constitutional bodies, such as the General Council of the Judiciary or the Council of State, but not the possibility for parliamentary groups to propose amendments.
Sumar, represented during the presentation of the law by the leader of the PCE, Enrique Santiago, introduced a modification in the parliamentary process. Just three lines to repeal the only additional provision of Law 7/2014. Although the PP is now trying to use urgent treatment as an excuse, even if the procedure had been usual, no consultative body would have been able to detect what was not included in the bill emanating from the Government but incorporated by a group. later.
In fact, this law was already on the table during the last legislature. In 2022, the government was questioned by Vox and victims’ associations specifically addressed the Ministry of the Interior, which denied that the executive was working on a legal change to release ETA prisoners by minimizing the years that they have served sentences in other cases in countries like France. The elections of July 2023 stopped the procedure.
Santiago explained the spirit of the change during a press conference: “We knew that there was discrimination against Spanish citizens compared to citizens of other EU countries. » “We have put an end to discrimination so that no Spaniard, no Andalusian, no Canary Islander, no citizen of any territory whatsoever is affected and suffers more discriminatory treatment than other citizens of the European Union in application of Community law”, he assured.
The MP denied on Monday any “transfer” to EH Bildu, an argument that the PP uses to try to divert attention from its error. The change will affect all types of prisoners, regardless of the crime they have committed. “The violence in the Basque Country ended ten years ago,” he said. “We are in different tones, I am not going to allow all citizens of this country not to benefit from a criminal law because someone does not like the Basques,” he defended. This reform is a demand that EH Bildu and the PNV have launched since the previous modification, in 2015. But the “abertzales” parties are not the only ones to have raised this demand in recent years.
Unanimously approved
Neither the PP nor Vox noticed the amendment. Or, if they detected it, they didn’t know how to interpret it. And if they knew how to read it, it seemed good to them. Because Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party voted in favor of the legal text in the Interior Commission. Also in plenary session of the Congress. There they were accompanied by the deputies of Santiago Abascal.
Presumably, the right did not see what it was approving when the law arrived in the Senate, where the PP has an absolute majority. The Spanish bicameral system does not allow the Upper House to block laws but, as happened with the amnesty, it can delay it, appeal, introduce amendments or whatever it considers. This time, both let it pass. The Senate did not offer amendments or veto it in its entirety. And the Constitution establishes that a norm in progress will only return to Congress if the Senate approves modifications, total or partial, of the text.
The PP, at the center of criticism, used its absolute majority in the Senate to delay the vote for a week, until October 14. But there’s not much else they can do. This Monday, Borja Sémper accused the government of forging a deception, of distorting the legislative process, and even of introducing amendments unrelated to the reason for the law. In the afternoon, the PP asked the government in a statement to withdraw the bill and recognized its powerlessness to prevent its final approval: “The PSOE is the only party able to stop these absurdities.”
From the Senate, the sources consulted by elDiario.es assure that “the text goes to the BOE without appeal” because “the amendment in question is included” in the approved text. The same sources recall that a similar situation had already occurred in 2002 and that the Constitutional Court had ruled that the Senate had nothing to do with it.
The Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT) estimates that 44 members of ETA could benefit from the deduction of the sentences they have already served in France and that seven could be released. In the note, the association chaired by Maite Alaruce hopes that what happened is a “mistake”. “Sooner or later, the Bilduetar roadmap aimed at emptying the prisons will come true and MM. Sánchez and Marlaska will be able to boast all their lives of being cult figures of ETA members,” says the AVT.
A 2008 framework decision
From Sumar, Enrique Santiago assured that he did not understand “the controversy generated”. “What we did was transpose a 2019 directive, already late, on criminal records. And take the opportunity to correct the discrimination that existed in Spanish legislation for not applying the 2008 framework decision on condemnatory resolutions of the European Union,” defended the Izquierda Unida MP.
This framework decision of the Council of the European Union, approved in July 2008, obliges EU member states to give the penalties of another member country the same effects as their own. In other words, a previous conviction handed down in another Member State must be taken into account when calculating the maximum prison sentence provided for by law, which in Spain is set at thirty years.
The Supreme Court was first asked in 2013 to interpret this framework decision. The request came from former ETA member José Luis Urrusolo Sistiaga, one of the most active of the 80s and 90s and who ended up taking the “path of Nanclares” after renouncing terrorism.
Until then, the practice of the courts was to reject the accumulation of sentences served abroad. However, the High Court ruled in March 2014 that in the absence of rules expressly regulating this matter, it was necessary to interpret it as coherently as possible with European regulations. And, therefore, she studied the possibility of taking into consideration a sentence served in France for the purposes of cumulating sentences.
Finally, in November 2014, the government of Mariano Rajoy decided to incorporate this directive into Spanish law. The text approved by the Government – both the preliminary draft and the draft – almost directly transposed this framework decision. However, during the parliamentary process, organizations such as the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT) warned that this regulation could allow some ETA members to be released from prison earlier. During the amendment process, restrictions were placed on cumulative sentences in other countries. This is how the additional provision was included which prevents the accumulation of sentences handed down abroad before August 15, 2010 and which now repeals the Sumar amendment.
The new Spanish law led to a change in jurisprudence in the Supreme Court, which began to reject requests from ETA members to take into account prison time spent in France. The case was brought before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has repeatedly confirmed that time spent in French prisons is not taken into account in sentencing in Spain.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice explains that the new regulation is not incompatible with Strasbourg’s decisions. “The ECHR does not establish how this should be done. He only ruled out that the current system is downright illegal,” he says. Let us also remember that there is a report from the Council of State and a preliminary question asked by the National Court which “miltend for a full integration of the effects of the convictions of European countries in Spain”. This Monday, the head of Justice, Félix Bolaños, defended to the media that the government had “nothing to do” with the promotion of a modification which, according to him, is the result of a “peaceful” parliamentary procedure and unanimous.”
