The role of TC in process protection

Next week, the Supreme Court will ratify its decision that the amnesty law cannot be applied to the crime of embezzlement for which the leaders of the trial were convicted, which, although expected, is no longer important, as it will be. give free rein to the disqualified Junqueras, Romeva, Turull and Bassa to seek protection before the Constitutional Court in the hope of finding in the body presided over by Conde-Pumpido what justice denied them. There is no doubt that in a moment of tension like that experienced in the Domenico Scarlatti case, where, without having begun to address the appeals and questions of unconstitutionality concerning the amnesty, the very composition of the court is already being called into question. question, the landing of these protections will introduce even more pressure into the pot in which no less than twenty-seven challenges are being prepared to which, because of these protections, it will be necessary to add new ones or, failing that, abstentions. We must not forget that Junqueras’ defense criticized the current president of the TC in 2021 for not being “neutral or impartial” and that, before the plenary which was going to approve this challenge, Conde-Pumpido himself is abstained from all related matters. .with the ‘processes’. The disqualification of the ERC leader seems to have something to do with this procedure, although it is very likely that this time Junqueras does not want to remove him. The government needs to buy time and it will not be the Constitutional Court which will pronounce it. turnkey; Until mid-2025, nothing and times have changed. Even the rush to implement the amnesty – the law itself sets a two-month deadline – and to give an immediate response to the expected arrest of Puigdemont in Barcelona in August – the order is said to accept very cautious measures to save him from prison was already prepared – have now turned into a scenario of tense calm, to the point that the resolution of the appeals for unconstitutionality is expected in the middle or even the end of next year, on the eve of the end of Conde-Pumpido’s mandate. If it took two plenary sessions (they are biweekly) to note the abstentions of the magistrate and former minister Juan Carlos Campo, debating twenty-seven challenges in a fragmented manner and with the tension that is currently accumulating can take months, admit judicial sources. . The truth is that at the same time, the delicate moment in which Sánchez’s relationship with Junts finds itself, which threatens to explode the legislative body, makes it opportune to send the message that the government has the upper hand. We must buy time, and with this objective, the Constitutional Court will not be the one to slow down the wheels. Thus, Junqueras’ appeal will not benefit from preferential treatment nor from a judgment which, at that time, could again generate a conflict with the Supreme Court like that recently observed with the ERE judgment, in which Many constitutionalists have denounced in these pages that the Progressive majority has gone too far and entered the jurisdictional field by reinterpreting the decision of the Supreme Court to acquit the former socialist leader of the Junta de Andalucía. Faced with the situation of not admitting the calls for protection – and breaking the game with Sánchez’s pro-independence partners – or admitting them by implicitly or explicitly ordering the Supreme Court to archive the execution (in which she keeps Junqueras disqualified until 2031), perhaps the most prudent thing to do is to wait. Especially because in this second scenario, the procedural court reserves the right to ask a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union taking into account the special protection enjoyed by embezzlement under European law. And at the TC, they know perfectly well that the one who has the upper hand is Europe.

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