“They treated us as if we were Martians… but we were right,” Carles Puigdemont’s entourage boasted last April, when the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union, Maciej Szpunar , demanded the annulment of the decision of the President of the European Parliament. that denied the former Catalan president the certificate of MEP after the May 2019 elections, for not respecting the Spanish Constitution.
Last Thursday, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided not to follow Szpunar’s criteria and rejected Puigdemont’s defense appeal, to which ordered to pay procedural costs since all his requests were rejected.
The setback of Carles Puigdemont, who predicted for years that European justice would prevail over the European Parliament and the Spanish institutions (“Thank God we have Europe”proclaimed his legal team on the X network) is resounding.
The CJEU not only approves the decision of the then President of the European Chamber, Antonio Tajani, not to give the seat to Puigdemont in 2019. It also does not disavow the Spanish Central Electoral Commission, which excluded Puigdemont from the list of deputies sent to the European elections. Parliament for failing to take an oath or promise to comply with the Constitution, as established by Spanish electoral law. This therefore does not discredit the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court, which confirmed in June 2020 the correctness of the decision of the Central Election Commission.
Furthermore, the CJEU does not rule, as Puigdemont wished, on the compatibility with EU law of the legal obligation of Spanish MEPs to respect the Constitution.
And, once again contradicting the former Catalan president on the run, he establishes that control of this requirement does not lie with the European Parliament, but “exclusively with the national courts, where appropriate after a preliminary question to the CJEU” or this last if there is a call for non-compliance promoted by the European Commission.
In practice, the content of the CJEU judgment makes things very difficult for Antoni Comín. The current President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, did not grant him the title of MEP after the June 9 elections for the same reason as in 2019: he did not respect the Constitution. National courts unlikely to change their judgment or the European Commission launches an appeal for non-compliance.
Thus, the first dispute before the CJEU which resulted in an irrevocable judgment ended in the failure of Puigdemont’s strategy.
Despite the propaganda, until now the former Catalan president did not obtain any favorable decision in Luxembourg.
Unfavorable failures
The first unfavorable judgment was delivered by the EU General Court on July 6, 2022. This is the question that the Court of Justice ruled on Thursday, ratifying the TGEU judgment and approving Tajani’s actions.
The second judgment, also from the TGEU and delivered on July 5, 2023, rejected the request for annulment of the decision of the President of the European Parliament not to protect the parliamentary immunity of Puigdemont against the arrest warrants issued by the judge of the Supreme Court Pablo Llarena. on October 14, 2019, after the cessation of the process.
The third ruling so far by the TGEU, which is under appeal to the CJEU, refused to overturn the requests granted by the European Parliament at Llarena’s request for Puigdemont, Comín and Clara Ponsatí be judged in the case of process. All lost their immunity as MEPs.
In the midst of these three judgments, several orders were issued by the European Court of Justice on incidental questions. These were the only decisions that brought some joy to the fugitives, since three interim measures orders returned immunity at different stages (December 2019, June 2021 and May 2022) while the CJEU ruled definitively.
In January 2023, in response to a preliminary question posed by Judge Llarena, the CJEU determined that Belgium could not deny Puigdemont’s surrender, arguing that the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to try him and therefore there is a risk that his right to a fair trial will be violated.
The battle continues
The above processes can be considered skirmishes when taking into account the ongoing legal battles.
The decision on process which was handed down by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court in October 2019, fully approved by the Constitutional Court, is the subject of an appeal by several of those convicted before the European Court of Human Rights. And above all while waiting amnesty lawalready questioned before the CJEU by bodies such as the National Court or the Court of Auditors.
On July 29, the advisor to the Court of Auditors Elena Hernandez asked the first preliminary question aimed at calling into question the amnesty law before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Hernáez asked eight questions to the European Court to clarify whether the amnesty of process – which extends to accounting liability, estimated at 3.4 million euros according to the prosecutor – opposes Community rules which oblige Member States to develop an “effective and dissuasive fight against fraud” and against “any illegal activity harming the financial interests of the European Union. Union.”
