"It's Trumpism": that's how the Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, has defined the response that Spain's Central Electoral Commission (JEC) delivered to the European Parliament this Thursday regarding his credentials as an MEP, which seeks to generate doubts over his MEP status. In a message on his Twitter account, Puigdemont criticized the document that the Spanish electoral body sent to the European Parliament, calling it a "10-page tangle" that does not even include the basic information requested, "the list which the Parliament was asking for", recalls the president in exile. For Carles Puigdemont, the JEC's text does not respond to the demands made by the European Parliament, an attitude he considers Trumpist. "But since it's in the name of Spain and the king, everyone [looks the other way]," he laments.
The opinion of the JEC made public this Thursday asserts that the Catalan president in exile must go to Madrid to collect his credentials. In its long text, the Spanish electoral body defends the country's electoral law, which establishes as an indispensable requirement that MEPs promise to abide by the constitution before the JEC. However, this response contradicts the ruling made in December 2019 by the European Court of Justice, asserting that MEPs are considered elected as soon as the ballot box results are official. Although in the eyes of Europe, Puigdemont is an MEP and is treated as such, the JEC considers that he is not and asserts that his seat must remain vacant until he complies with the Spanish rules. This also implies that his rights as an MEP must be suspended.
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Puigdemont reminds Spain of its "duty" to the EU chamber
To make his point about the simplicity of the European Parliament's request to Spain, Carles Puigdemont accompanies his tweet with part of the JEC's own document, which paraphrases the request to the Spanish body, and also adds some specific quotes. Thus, the JEC reports how the EU chamber's letter "attributes 59 seats to the Kingdom of Spain and that since the European elections of May 26th, 2019, the Kingdom of Spain has only officially notified 55 elected candidates to the European Parliament." The JEC text then continues with three direct quotes from the Parliament's letter, shown in Puigdemont's capture:
"[The Parliament's request] indicates that 'the Kingdom of Spain has a duty of loyal cooperation with the European Parliament', and that 'part of this duty consists of notifying a complete list of officially elected deputies in order to allow the European Parliament to carry out its function with the total number of the members of which it is composed'. It concludes 'inviting the Kingdom of Spain to designate without delay the number of people corresponding to the number of seats that have been assigned to it.'
Thus, the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, asked the JEC to confirm that Puigdemont and his colleagues Toni Comín, Clara Ponsatí and Jordi Solé (of ERC) appear on the list of 59 positions proclaimed elected in the European elections of year 2019. The request was made after the chamber's Legal Affairs Committee hads been unable to verify the MEPs' credentials. In Puigdemont's tweet, the instructions from Robert Metsola are underlined for emphasis, along with the phrase in which she stresses Spain's "duty of loyal cooperation".
What happened after the 2019 elections
After the 2019 European elections, the JEC recognized that Puigdemont and Comín, along with Oriol Junqueras, had been elected, but subsequently did not include them in the list sent to Brussels since they did not attend the Congress of Deputies to swear or promise the Spanish Constitution - at that time Puigdemont and Comín were already in exile, while Junqueras was in pre-trial prison. Six months later, following the EU court's ruling, it was already too late for Junqueras, as he had by then been convicted of sedition, but on the basis of the EU Court of Justice ruling, the European Parliament recognized the seats of the two exiled politicians, and the same happened with Ponsatí, who shortly after, occupied one of the seats left vacant by the English MEPs with the approval of Brexit. The case of Jordi Solé, who then acquired the seat left vacant by Junqueras, is different in that he assumed the seat without swearing on the Constitution, but, on the other hand, he did present himself to Congress. Nevertheless, the JEC pronounced in the same direction in his case.