Will Spain soon have a government? The fate of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who was re-elected last November in early parliamentary elections, is now in the hands of Spanish MPs.
Parliament, who are meeting from Saturday 4 January in plenary session in Madrid, is due to vote on the coalition set out by Mr Sánchez. If his proposal does not obtain a qualified majority—at least 176 votes out of 350—at the end of the first debates, a second round will take place on Tuesday 7 January. A simple majority will then suffice to renew the Prime Minister's mandate.
Pedro Sánchez, who has been forced to conclude a series of alliances in order to secure a majority, should be able to rely, during the vote, on the abstention of the 13 deputies of the ERC pro-independence party, the Republican Left of Catalonia.
The vote comes just a few days before the start of the European Parliament's session. Almost eight months after their election in May 2019, the MEPs are preparing to welcome two of the three Catalan MPs who have so far been prevented from sitting in the European Parliament by Spanish authorities.
They are Carles Puigdemont, former head of the Catalan government, his running mate, Toni Comín—both taking refuge in Belgium to escape a Spanish arrest warrant.
The case of the former Vice-President of the pro-independence region, Oriol Junqueras, who is in custody in Spain on charges of sedition and embezzlement of public funds, is different. The EU Court of Justice ruled last 19th December that he should have been granted parliamentary immunity as soon as the results of the European elections were officially announced (see EUROPE 12394/1). A second Court ruling the following day also ruled in favour of Mr Puigdemont and Mr Comín (see EUROPE 12395/5), allowing them too to sit in the European Parliament.
In order to comply with the first ruling, the Spanish State asked the Spanish Supreme Court at the end of December to allow Mr Junqueras to sit in the European Parliament, while requesting that his parliamentary immunity be lifted as soon as possible so that he could continue to serve his thirteen-year prison sentence.
On Thursday 2 January, it was learned that following these rulings, a Brussels examining magistrate also decided to suspend the extradition proceedings against Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín, and to lift the judicial review that had prevented them from leaving Belgian territory. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki, intern)