Aïda Sánchez-Aquí Europa
The plenary session of the European Parliament will debate next week the Amnesty Law agreed between the PSOE and the Catalan pro-independence Junts in the framework of the negotiations for the legislature agreement. The debate has been a demand of the European Popular Party that, possibly, will have the support of the right and center parties.
According to the Populars, the debate has been requested “to make it clear that the rule of law is non-negotiable in the EU and cannot be sacrificed simply to obtain the votes needed to form a government majority.”
“The EPP Group is extremely concerned about the deterioration of the rule of law in Spain following the attempt by the Socialists to win the support of the Catalan separatists. The provisions of the amnesty pact they have signed risk violating the separation of powers and undermining judicial independence,” said Manfred Weber, EPP President and Vice-President of the EPP Group in the European Parliament, and Dolors Montserrat, Vice-President of the EPP Group and head of the Spanish delegation.
“When all the professional judicial associations, as well as business representatives and trade unions, sound the alarm, we must take it very seriously. We have seen this before in Poland and we expect the European Commission to make it clear immediately that, for example, the provisions on lawfare are totally unacceptable,” Weber explained.
Weber and Montserrat pointed out that when the pact includes assumptions of so-called “lawfare”, opening the door to interference in the judiciary by the legislature as the associations of judges and prosecutors have demanded, “it is nothing less than a serious threat to judicial independence in Spain”.
In addition, both the EPP and Ciudadanos have sent a letter to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, asking for urgent intervention. “Spain is on the verge of the most important constitutional and political crisis of the last six years”, state both groups in the beginning of the letter, in which they explain that the pact between PSOE and Junts and the proposal of an amnesty law mark “the beginning of an era of political destabilization and a clear degradation of the very foundations of the democratic rule of law”.
Precisely, several centers of people gathered this Sunday in Brussels, convened by the Spanish delegation of the Popular Party (PP) in the EU capital, to ask for “help” to the European institutions after the legislature agreement between PSOE and Junts against the amnesty law.
