The European Parliament was not competent to call into question the lawfulness of the vacancy resulting from the withdrawal of the mandate of the Catalan pro-independence MEP Oriol Junqueras, said the Vice-President of the General Court of the European Union, Rosario Silva de Lapuerta, in an order delivered on Thursday 8 October (Case C-201/20) (see EUROPE 12402/6).
Mr Junqueras is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence in Spain for sedition and has been stripped of his elective office. He was not allowed to take the oath before the Spanish Constitution to validate his election to the European Parliament in the European elections of May 2019. His seat has been declared vacant by the Spanish Central Electoral Commission. It has been occupied by Jordi Solé i Ferrando since July 2020 (see EUROPE 12534/3).
According to the Vice-President of the General Court, when the vacancy of a seat results from the forfeiture of an MEP’s mandate as a result of the application of national law, the European Parliament is only informed of the expiry of that mandate by the national authorities. It is a pre-existing legal situation resulting exclusively from a decision by these authorities, of which Parliament can only take note, she added.
It is therefore not for the European Parliament to verify compliance with the procedure laid down by national law, stated Rosario Silva de Lapuerta, because that power belongs exclusively to the competent national courts. Nor is it for Parliament to verify the conformity of this procedure with EU law, since such a power also belongs to the competent national courts, after reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court if necessary, or to the Court itself in the context of an action for failure to fulfil obligations. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)