The General Court of the European Union rejected Friday, November 26 a new request introduced on October 1 by the former President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont to recover his immunity as a MEP, the court established in Luxembourg announced in a statement.
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This is the second time in less than six months that this court has rejected a summary request (urgent) to suspend the lifting of immunity voted in March by the European Parliament, where the Catalan independence leader was elected in 2019. This new request was filed a few days after his brief arrest at the end of September in Italy, at an airport in Sardinia, where he was going to participate in a Catalan festival.
The Italian authorities arrested him under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain.
No "risk of handing over to the Spanish authorities"
Carles Puigdemont, 58, is claimed by the Spanish justice which accuses him of "
sedition
" and "
embezzlement of public funds
" for his role in the failed attempt to secede from Catalonia in 2017, one of the worst crises crossed by Spain since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975. But in his order issued on Friday, the Vice-President of the General Court of the EU noted that the criminal proceedings initiated by Spain are currently suspended, pending a response from the European Court of Justice to a preliminary question put by the Spanish Supreme Court.
Therefore there is currently no reason, according to him, to fear an execution of the arrest warrant on EU territory.
"
The executing judicial authorities do not intend to execute the European arrest warrants targeting the deputies before the Court rules on this request
", writes the General Court of the EU, for which the Catalan MEPs "
do not incur , at this stage, the risk of being handed over to the Spanish authorities
”.
Read alsoThe Catalan leader Puigdemont in Sardinia for his appearance
The ordinance also concerns two other Catalan independentist elected representatives, Antoni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, who are also being prosecuted by the Spanish courts.
Antoni Comin went into exile in Belgium at the end of October 2017, like Carles Puigdemont, while Clara Ponsati, also a member of the European Parliament, lives in Scotland, where the courts abandoned the extradition procedure against him this summer.
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