The former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont and the former counselor Antoni Comín in the EurochamberFrancisco Seco (AP)
The Constitutional Court has denied the amparo to the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, and the former counselor Antoni Comín, before the Central Electoral Board (JEC), which did not recognize the validity of their promise to comply with the Constitution, for not being in person , once elected MEPs and while they remained on the run from justice.
Said oath or promise was mandatory so that the necessary requirements to access the status of member of the European Parliament could be understood as formally fulfilled.
Since Puigdemont and Comín were able to take possession of their seats despite this refusal by the Electoral Board, the Constitutional Court has considered that the request for protection of both has lost its purpose.
However, the rejection of your appeal does not mean the end of the claims raised.
Puigdemont continues to claim not only his status as a member of the European Parliament, but especially the parliamentary immunity that comes with it.
The Central Electoral Board has never recognized Puidemont and Comín as members of the European parliamentary assembly.
But the European Parliament itself did attribute this condition to them, even though they lack the aforementioned requirement of the oath or promise in person of the Constitution.
All of this was discussed last week in the General Court of the European Union (TGUE), where the representative of the European Parliament stated last Friday that he had recognized the former Catalan president and two other pro-independence leaders as MEPs –Clara Ponsatí, in addition to Comín —, was “probably illegal”.
This change in criteria of the European Parliament occurs after the Central Electoral Board has ratified its initial communication to that legislative assembly in the sense that the seats attributed to Puigdemont and the aforementioned two
former ministers
had remained vacant.
The Board also indicated that the prerogatives of both —among them that of immunity— were suspended as long as they did not comply with the requirement of compliance with the Constitution in person.
However, to reject the appeal for amparo, the Constitutional Court has taken into account the fact that the European Parliament did accept the election of the plaintiffs as deputies in its plenary session on January 13, 2020, with retroactive effects to the beginning of the legislature, and the full exercise since then of the rights corresponding to the statute of MEP.
The court, in short, has estimated that these circumstances imply "an extra-procedural satisfaction of the nuclear claim of the appeal, that is, access to the status of European deputy with full exercise of parliamentary functions."
All this, however, pending the main decision of the General Court of the European Union, which is the one related to the recognition or not of the immunity of Puigdemont,