The waiving of the parliamentary immunity of the three exiled Catalan MEPs, Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, has been approved by the European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs. The next step will be the vote in the Parliament's plenary session, scheduled for the first week of March. The report by Bulgarian MEP Angel Dzhambazki, which argued in favour of accepting the Spanish Supreme Court's request to the Parliament, was approved with 15 votes in favour, 8 against and two abstentions.
There are a total of 25 European deputies in the Committee on Legal Affairs, of whom five are Spanish. The European People's Party group has 7 deputies, two of those are from the Spanish PP; the Socialist group has 5, two of whom are members of Spain's PSOE; and the liberals of Renew Europe have 4, among whom is the president of the committee Adrián Vázquez, Spanish MEP for the Ciudadanos party. In addition, there are two MEPs from the Conservatives and Reformists group, and three from Identity and Democracy, the Euro-skeptic group. Finally, there is one non-attached MEP, one from The Left group and two from the Greens/EFA.
The Left group, against
French MEP from The Left group, Manon Aubry, who opposed waiving the immunity of the three MEPs in today's vote in committee, announced that her group will also oppose it when it reaches the plenary session and argued, in statements to the ACN, that the case has “a political dimension” and the trial in Spain's Supreme Court “will not be just”.
Chairman of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Spanish MEP for Cs, Adrián Vázquez / Europa Press
The waiving of the immunity from prosecution of Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí was submitted today to a vote by the Committee on Legal Affairs after the rapporteur, the ultra-conservative Bulgarian MEP Angel Dzhambazki presented his opinion to the committee yesterday, reporting in favour of lifting immunity.
The report was leaked to the press before it was debated in committee, which has sparked a written protest by Junts MEPs to the president of the chamber, David Sassoli.
Next: the plenary, in March
The Spanish Supreme Court's requests will now have to go to the plenary session of the European Parliament, probably in the second week of March.
For the three Catalan pro-independence politicians, who are in exile in Europe, it is the third time in the last four years that they have faced an attempt by the Spanish court to extradite them to face charges of sedition for their roles in the Catalan independence referendum of 2017. Elected as MEPs for the JxCat party by Catalan and Spanish voters in 2019, they are now protected by parliamentary immunity from prosecution. The vote in the Committee on Legal Affairs is the first step in responding to the judicial request to waive this immunity.
The Spanish court launched the procedure in January last year, after Puigdemont and Comín were able to take possession of their seats as MEPs, six months after the European elections, and after the Europe Court of Justice had ruled that fellow Catalan politician, jailed ERC party leader Oriol Junqueras, had become an MEP, with all his rights including parliamentary immunity from prosecution, before he was convicted by the Supreme Court.
Even if the full Parliament ratifies the waiving of their immunity, the three MEPs will continue to hold their seats. They have announced that, if the lifting of their immunity as MEPs is confirmed in plenary, they will appeal the decision. In the event that the appeal does not succeed, it would be up to the Belgian judiciary to rule on the European Arrest Order. On January 7th, the Brussels Court of Appeals ruled against the extradition of exiled Catalan minister Lluís Puig, in a very similar case.
A German court also rejected the extradition of Carles Puigdemont for sedition and rebellion in 2018.
In the main image, Carles Puigdemont, between Clara Ponsatí and Toni Comín, in the European Parliament / ACN