BRUSSELS — The thorny issue of Catalan separatism reared its head again on Wednesday when a top EU court stripped the legal immunity of three members of the European Parliament.
The EU’s General Court ruled that the Spanish region’s former president, Carles Puigdemont, along with two other separatist MEPs — Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí — should lose their parliamentary immunity amid a long-running legal battle over the way the European Parliament responded to requests from the Spanish Supreme Court.
Spain has been pushing to remove the MEPs’ immunity in order to prosecute them for their roles in an unlawful Catalan independence referendum held in 2017. Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí fled Spain in the immediate aftermath of the vote and were later elected to the European Parliament.
In Brussels, Puigdemont said he would appeal the ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
“This doesn’t end here; on the contrary, everything continues,” Puigdemont told journalists at a press conference in the Parliament on Tuesday. “Obviously, we will do it as soon as possible and in the most ambitious way possible, and obviously we will wait for a … favorable resolution.”
Puigdemont said that after Wednesday’s ruling, he was neither closer to nor further from returning to Spain.
The General Court’s ruling centered on votes by the European Parliament in 2021 in favor of waiving the immunity of the three MEPs. The Catalan politicians argued that the vote, which was undertaken at the request of Spain’s Supreme Court, was politically motivated.
Puigdemont and Comín also claimed that the late president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, had implicitly refused to permit them to defend their immunity status earlier on in the process.
On Wednesday, the court in Luxembourg rejected those arguments in two separate rulings.
“The General Court rejects all the pleas put forward by the three Members, in particular their arguments that the Parliament erred in concluding that the legal proceedings at issue were not brought with the intention of damaging the Members’ activities,” the court wrote in a press release.
Adrián Vázquez, a Spanish MEP from the liberal Ciudadanos party who chairs the legal affairs committee that deals with immunity procedures, said the ruling “proves that the process of lifting immunity has been impeccable.”
The General Court’s ruling could pave the way for the MEPs’ extradition to Spain — something long sought by authorities in Madrid.
Last year, Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government made changes to the penal code that led to some, but not all, of the charges against the separatists being dropped or downgraded.
That allowed some longstanding arrest warrants to be canceled — and for Ponsatí to return to Spain for the first time since 2017.
Ponsati was briefly detained by police but released a few hours later.
Although Spain’s Supreme Court dropped its sedition charge against Puigdemont in January, the former president of Catalonia is still being pursued by Spanish authorities for the crimes of aggravated embezzlement and disobedience.
In Madrid, Spanish Justice Minister Pilar Llop responded to the ruling by insisting, “Citizen Puigdemont must appear in court.”
It’s unclear how quickly Spain can issue a fresh European arrest warrant for the Catalan MEPs; that could depend on whether the Court of Justice of the EU agrees to hear Puigdemont’s appeal and whether it provisionally restores their immunity in the meanwhile.
Even if the Court of Justice declines to hear the case, it also remains unclear whether Belgian authorities will respond to a new arrest warrant for Puigdemont given the country’s historic reluctance to hand over individuals claimed by the Spanish legal system.
Developments surrounding the case could play a part in upcoming general elections in Spain, scheduled for July 23.
While Catalan independence has faded as a major political issue, it could return to the top of the agenda if the far-right Vox party, which has a zero-tolerance policy toward independence and regional autonomy, manages to enter the national government.
Aitor Hernández-Morales and Arnau Busquets Guàrdia contributed reporting.
