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The European Parliament voted to strip the parliamentary immunity of three Catalan MEPs who are facing sedition charges in Spain for their roles in organizing a 2017 independence referendum, according to results announced Tuesday.
The vote in favor of lifting the immunity from prosecution for the former regional president Carles Puigdemont, as well as a former health official, Antoni Comín, and a former education official, Clara Ponsatí, was widely expected. It is also unlikely to resolve their legal saga.
Two Belgian courts have blocked the extradition of a fourth former Catalan official, Lluis Puig, and prosecutors have declined to appeal further, essentially leaving a precedent in place that should shield the three MEPs. Their cases have been on hold pending the decision on immunity.
A Belgian appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that Spain’s Supreme Court did not have proper jurisdiction to issue an EU arrest warrant, and that there was also a risk Puig would not benefit from a presumption of innocence if returned to Spain and therefore would suffer a violation of fundamental rights.
The Spanish government moved aggressively to prosecute cases related to the 2017 referendum and some former officials were convicted of sedition and sentenced to up to 13 years in prison. But the crackdown has done little to dampen the independence movement in Catalonia and pro-independence parties once again won a majority in regional elections last month.
In the case of Puigdemont, the outcome of the vote, which took place Monday evening, was 400 in favor of lifting immunity to 248 against with 45 abstentions.
In recommending a vote in favor of removing immunity, the Committee on Legal Affairs noted that it was not up to Parliament to judge the merit of the charges, but merely to assess that the legal cases were not brought to interfere with their work in Parliament. That was clear, the committee, said because the efforts to organize the independence referendum took place before any of the three were elected, when their “status as a member of the European Parliament was still hypothetical.”
In many ways, the vote to strip immunity only highlighted the extent to which Puigdemont, Comín, and Ponsatí have managed to turn Spain’s regional conflict over Catalonia into a headache for EU institutions and member countries by winning seats in the European Parliament and fleeing to Belgium.
At the same time, following last month’s elections, the fugitive Catalan MEPs face the risk that their movement is going forward without them. Pere Aragonès, the current regional leader, and his Catalonia’s Republican Left (ERC) party are preparing to form a pro-independence government and have rejected any partnership with the social-democratic party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, even as Madrid has dangled the possibility of pardons for convicted Catalan politicians.
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