BRUSSELS — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has just secured the key support from Catalan separatists that he needs to remain in power, but the amnesty bill his Socialist Party has promised to file in exchange for their support has kicked off a war of words between Brussels and Madrid.
Thursday’s deal between Sánchez and former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont’s Junts party commits the Socialists to file a bill in the Spanish parliament that will give amnesty to those prosecuted for their involvement in the failed 2017 Catalan independence referendum.
The exact scope and extension of the draft legislation, which is expected to be presented in the Spanish parliament in the coming days, has not yet been made clear.
In a letter addressed to Spain’s justice and presidency ministers on Wednesday, the European Union’s Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said there were “serious concerns” about the amnesty bill, the existence of which has been the subject of fierce speculation for several months, without clarifying what those concerns were.
Reynders also asked for details “as regards the personal, material and temporal scope of this envisaged law.”
But the Spanish government rebuffed Reynders and said the bill had nothing to do with Spain’s executive.
In a letter, Spanish Presidency Minister Félix Bolaños pointed out that the Spanish government had been in caretaker mode since July’s inconclusive national elections and therefore could not propose any laws.
“Any bill that may be registered in the Congress of Deputies [Spain’s parliament] will come from the parliamentary groups and not from the council of ministers,” Bolaños wrote.
Reynders’ letter and preemptive questions about a bill that has not even been presented — much less passed — by parliament surprised Spanish commentators.
The amnesty deal, which would ensure Sánchez gets the backing of seven lawmakers from the pro-independence Junts party, is set to put an end to months of political stalemate after elections in July left no party with a clear path to a majority.
Aitor Hernández-Morales reported from Madrid.
