The rejection of the appeals presented by MEPs Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí before the European General Court (EGC), which in practice means, even if it is perhaps provisional, the withdrawal of their parliamentary immunity, is a serious setback. The forcefulness of the EGC's conclusion leaves no room to find elements of the text that pro-independence supporters can cling to, since there is no outstanding paragraph to take hold of, no way to find shades of gray, because everything is black. One by one, it takes apart everything from the accusations of violation of rights to the suitability of the Supreme Court and the doubts about the objectivity of the rapporteur of the immunity request in the European Parliament's legal affairs committee, close to Vox. There is one last option left to reverse this situation, which means going through the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which, unlike the General Court, is where the exiled pro-independence politicians have found, up till now, a radically different reception to their demands.
The tone of Puigdemont, Comín and Gonzalo Boye was not, at least in public, that of other occasions during these years, and the same can be said of the mood of the large Junts delegation which travelled to Brussels, along with representatives of other pro-independence parties (ERC and the CUP), the sovereignist non-governmental bodies (the ANC, Òmnium, the Council of the Republic and the AMI) and the president of the Catalan chamber. Only MEP Clara Ponsatí seemed to be outside this frame during the press conference and took advantage of the wide political representation present to make a complete rejection of the strategy followed since 2017 by the independence movement, for which, by the way, she was applauded by the president of the ANC, Dolors Feliu. The words of Ponsatí, surely even sadder, in some aspects, than the very pronouncement by the court.
The EGC resolution, with regard to which the MEPs' lawyers have already announced that they will lodge appeals and seek interim injunctions so that they cannot be enforced, affects their mobility in the territory of the European Union. Not only in Spain, which was prepared to go above any pronouncement favourable to Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsati and arrest them if they set foot anywhere on Spanish territory, but in other countries outside of Belgium, which is where they have set their residence. To the extent that we will have to wait and see if they do, in the end, travel to Strasbourg, where the plenary session of the European Parliament is being held next week - it was affirmed this Wednesday that they would go - or whether, on the contrary, they would act cautiously in case judge Pablo Llarena hurries through new arrest warrants, which, in this case, would most certainly mean their arrest and immediate handover to Spain, since the General Court would not have had enough time to consider whether or not to grant the injunctions, which although they have been announced have not even been presented.
In many respects, the decision of the EGC not only does not give even a glimmer of hope, but goes back on pronouncements that the Court of Justice had already definitively made and which we will now wait and see if it recovers in the months ahead when it pronounces again. The Spanish government, the PP, Vox and the Supreme Court all have reason to be satisfied, since they have won this round, the penultimate one, without any doubt. What is the most optimistic scenario that can be expected from the pronouncement of the ECJ towards the end of the year? Immunity and mobility within the EU under conditions similar to those of recent years. And the worst? That their mobility will be limited to Belgium and, without them losing their seats, they will not have the immunity that allows them to have wider mobility. It is very possible, in the short term, that the frequent trips they made to Northern Catalonia will enter a state of hibernation, even if that is temporary.
Since the departure of president Puigdemont and part of his executive to exile after the dissolution of the Catalan government and the application of Article 155, hopes were placed on European justice as an impartial arbiter, unlike the Supreme Court or the Constitutional Court. This must remain so, even if the disagreement with the General Court's view is serious and, in part, worrying. Knowing, of course, that the going has got tough and that July 5th has been anything but a good day for the independence movement.