The president of the Spanish far-right VOX party, Santiago Abascal, announced on Tuesday 14 January, on the sidelines of the European Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg, that he had filed suit before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against the European Parliament. He criticised the institution, and in particular its president, David Sassoli, for having accredited the Catalan separatists Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín as MEPs (see EUROPE 12397/6).
“We will not allow law-abiding Spaniards to end up paying the salaries of two fugitives who tried to undermine the nation’s unity”, the VOX president told the press. According to the politician, the two Catalans violated the Spanish constitution and the “principle of equality before the law”. They therefore filed a case for annulment of the Parliament’s decision of accreditation.
“Decisions such as this one by the European Parliament contribute to the failure of the European institutions, already in a serious crisis”, added Jorge Buxadé MEP (ECR, Spain).
How legal is that? According to several sources, the approach is unlikely to succeed and is more a “political stunt”. One of them explained to us that it is only possible to bring a case before the CJEU when one is directly affected by an act or when one challenges the legality of a free trade agreement. The only solution, according to the latter, would be to lodge a complaint at the national level for the national judge to make a preliminary reference.
Another source indicated that the CJEU could deal with this kind of issue under very restrictive conditions, but that the procedure could be lengthy: between one year and 15 months.
So far, the court has received nothing. It would appear that some VOX members came to the site to file a complaint, but were turned away on the grounds that complaints are filed electronically.
See the appeal lodged by VOX (in Spanish): http://bit.ly/3acHUEa (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)