THE STRANGE CASE OF THE CATALAN MEPs.
Not many are aware that there is a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) elected in May 2019, whilst waiting for trial in a European Union member country’s jail. A trial which ended in October 2019, with a 13 years long conviction for, essentially, organizing a referendum. But this tale gets foggy if we consider that, from the moment of his election in May 2019, the MEP should have been granted parliamentary immunity, and therefore not locked up and tried in the first place. According to who? According to the European Parliament, and even the European Court of Justice, in December 2019.
https://twitter.com/EUCourtPress/status/1207583208092684288?s=20
Roughly a year after the declaration, the 4th of December 2020, the European Court of Justice asserted its decision in a blatant fashion, publishing a tweet on its official profile where the references to the convicted MEP are clear.
https://twitter.com/EUCourtPress/status/1334784514246258691?s=20
Why’s that? It might be that this already foggy story risks to get darker due to a new ruling, where the Commission and the European Parliament have been addressed by a member state, which asked the parliamentary immunity of three Members of Parliament to be lifted. All of this, so that they can get prosecuted and arrested for the same crime, the organization of a referendum.
It’s staggering how this serious matter is so hardly known and told.
The source of these misdeeds might be separatism, the greatest taboo of national governments.
Catalan separatism, just like any other independence movement across Europe’s history, puts on the table a unresolvable dilemma for the traditional narrative of any sovereign state. It admits history’s imperfections, summons the fallout of a system, the latest European tale on the rise of national states that unite instead of dividing, closing both eyes in front of the fact that sovereign states are and have been on each other’s throats for quite a long time.
And in one of the greatest arenas of Western democracy, the European Parliament, the conflict between an important and populous country of the European Union, Spain, and a separatist movement of the richest and most advanced region of the same state, Catalonia, breaks in. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41584864
But let’s not look at the ideologies in favour or against Catalan independence, and address the following: the citizens of said Catalan region have elected, in free and lawful elections, four MEPs one of which is in jail (and therefore never exercised his parliamentary functions) and the others are being pressured by the Spanish government for their immunity to be revoked, to arrest them too.
The tale of Oriol Junqueras, Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsati is no longer a matter of Spanish interior affairs, but a turning point for the past and future of the European Union. As it’s the European Union itself declaring that all elected Members of European Parliament are covered by immunity, which takes effect in the very moment the official electoral results are declared.
And today the European Parliament has appointed an extraordinary commission to examine Spain’s request, and the 14th of January 2021 this Commission will meet for the first time. A Commission where, following common sense, there should not be Spanish MEPs, but not only this isn’t the case, but quite the opposite in fact. Speaking of the impartiality of the judge…
https://www.radioradicale.it/scheda/623877/radicalnonviolentnews
This match is not only played against the Catalan MEPs. On the table there is not only their immunity, but the democratic process within the European Union, which is already paying the price of democratic deficits in its tools and institutions.
This fact risks to violate a right, parliamentary immunity, which is indispensable for the correct functioning of democracy, raising many’s attentions and worries.
The focus to what is particular, to what is uneven, to what is erratic. It’s in that focus that freedom is exercised and our rights are strengthened.
