European justice this Wednesday lifted the parliamentary immunity of the former president of the Catalan regional government, Carles Puigdemont, and two other members of the European Parliament who Spain says have been tried for Catalonia’s 2017 independence attempt.
The decision to revoke the parliamentary immunity of Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí was taken by the General Court of the European Union and still allows an appeal to a higher court, the Court of Justice of the European Union, which the former president of the regional government of the Spanish Autonomous Community of Catalonia has already said it will.
“Nothing ends, on the contrary. Everything continues. We will appeal to the Court of Justice of the EU,” Puigdemont wrote on the social network Twitter, shortly after today’s court ruling was made public.
Res not s”acaba, ben al contrari. Until continues. Appeal to the TJUE, and defensive goals at the end els nostres fonamentals drets, que són also els fonamentals drets dels catalans i els europeans. guanyar la libertat….
— krls.eth / Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) July 5, 2023
This Wednesday’s judgment of the General Court of the European Union (TGUE) thus confirms the withdrawal of the immunity of the three MEPs by the European Parliament, in March 2021, at the request of the Supreme Court of Spain.
In May 2021, the three independent MEPs submitted a request for interim measures to preventively restore their immunity, which the General Court of the EU accepted in a first decision on June 2 of the same year, but later withdrawn on July 30, as they were not at risk of being arrested.
Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí appealed this latest decision to the Court of Justice, which ruled in their favor again in May 2022, granting them provisional immunity until it issues a final judgment, which happened today.
Carles Puigdemont has lived in Belgium since 2017 to escape Spanish justice and has been a member of the European Parliament since 2019 for the independence party Together for Catalonia (JxCat).
Carles Puigdemont is charged by Spanish justice with embezzlement (for using public funds to organize an illegal referendum on Catalonia’s independence in October 2017) and disobedience.
He was also charged with sedition until January this year, but an amendment to Spain’s penal code ended this crime, one of which led to nine other independence supporters being arrested over Catalonia’s 2017 attempt at self-determination. including holding a referendum declared illegal by the Constitutional Court and a unilateral declaration of independence in the regional parliament.
The new Spanish Penal Code abolished the crime of sedition (which provided prison sentences of up to 15 years) and changed the crime of peculato (misuse or embezzlement of public money), reducing penalties for cases where funds were not used for personal enrichment , which is the case for supporters of Catalan independence.
Source: DN
