The European justice system withdrew this Wednesday the parliamentary immunity of the former president of the Catalan Generalitat Carles Puigdemont and two other MEPs claimed by Spain to be tried for the attempted independence of Catalonia in 2017.
The decision to withdraw the parliamentary immunity of Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí is from the General Court of the European Union and the former governor of the region of Catalonia has already admitted having gone to a higher court, the Court of Justice of the European Union .
“Nothing ends, on the contrary. Everything continues. We will file an appeal before 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 on the contrary.
– krls.eth / Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) July 5, 2023
The ruling of this Wednesday of the General Court of the European Union (TGUE) thus confirms the withdrawal of immunity from the three MEPs by the European Parliament, in March 2021, at the request of the Supreme Court of Spain.
In May 2021, the three pro-independence MEPs submitted a request for provisional measures for the preventive restoration of their immunity, which the General Court of the EU accepted in a first resolution on June 2 of the same year, but which it subsequently revoked, on 30 July, considering that they were not at risk of being detained.
Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí appealed this last decision before the CJEU, which in May 2022 again ruled in their favor, granting them provisional immunity, until a final judgment is issued, which occurred this Wednesday.
Carles Puigdemont has lived in Belgium since 2017 to escape Spanish justice and has been an MEP since 2019 for the independence party Together for Catalonia (JxCat).
Carles Puigdemont is accused by the Spanish justice of embezzlement (for the use of public funds to organize an illegal referendum on the independence of Catalonia, in October 2017), and disobedience.
Until January of this year he was also accused of sedition, but a modification of the Spanish Penal Code put an end to this crime, one of which led to the arrest of nine other independentistas for the attempt to self-determinate Catalonia in 2017. which involved the celebration of 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 for prison sentences of up to 15 years) and modified the crime of peculato (embezzlement or embezzlement of public funds), reducing the penalties for cases in which the funds were not used for personal enrichment, as is the case of the Catalan separatists.
Source: TSF
