In a judgment handed down on Wednesday 5 July (cases T-115/20 and T-272/21), the General Court of the European Union dismissed as inadmissible the appeals by three Catalan separatist members of the European Parliament - Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí - against the European Parliament’s decisions to waive their parliamentary immunity.
Mr Puigdemont, Mr Comín and Ms Ponsatí are challenging in the General Court the European Parliament’s decision of March 2021 to lift their parliamentary immunity at the request of the Spanish Supreme Court (see EUROPE 12674/2). It is acting in the context of criminal proceedings opened against them in March 2018 for alleged offences of rebellion and misappropriation of public funds due to the role played by the three Catalan separatists in the holding of the illegal Catalan independence referendum in October 2017.
T-115/20. In this case, the three Catalans are asking the General Court to annul an alleged decision by the President of the European Parliament, the late David Sassoli, not to uphold their immunity on the grounds that at that time the European Parliament could not consider them to be MEPs. Since then, the Court of Justice of the EU has validated the Catalan separatists’ election to the European Parliament (case C-502/19) (see EUROPE 12394/1).
According to the General Court, the implicit refusal to defend the immunity of the three Catalans was not capable of producing binding legal effects, and does not constitute a challengeable act.
T-272/21. In this case, the General Court dismissed in its entirety the appeal against the Parliament’s decisions to grant the three MEPs’ waiver of immunity requests.
In particular, the European Court is of the opinion that the Parliament did not err in concluding that the legal proceedings in question were not instituted with the intention of harming the activity of the Members. It points out that the events in question date back to October 2017, when the Catalan separatists became MEPs in June 2019. In addition, the Spanish Supreme Court’s indictment took place before the European elections and targeted other political figures.
According to the General Court, when examining a request for waiver of immunity, the Parliament is not required to examine the legality of Spanish judicial acts, as this is a matter for the national authorities alone.
As for the allegation that the European Parliament breached the principle of impartiality, the General Court finds nothing wrong with the fact that a single rapporteur was appointed to examine these cases of parliamentary immunity in the context of a single criminal procedure. Of course, it adds, the rapporteur’s role is not politically neutral, but it is carried out within a parliamentary committee of which the composition reflects the balance of political groups within the European Parliament.
The General Court observed that the appointment of the rapporteur, in this case Angel Dzhambazki (ECR, Bulgarian), who was responsible for the request for the waiver of immunity for the three MEPs, respected the equal rotation between the political groups. In its view, Mr Dzhambazki’s membership of the conservative ECR group therefore has no bearing on the assessment of his impartiality, even though the MEPs from the Spanish VOX party, which initiated the criminal proceedings against the three Members in Spain, are seated with the ECR group.
Reactions. Speaking to the press, the chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs, Adrián Vázquez Lázara (Renew Europe, Spanish), welcomed the General Court’s judgment, which he said confirmed that “the JURI committee and the Spanish judiciary have acted in accordance with the rule of law”. He spoke of three very difficult years marked by “toxicity, pressure and threats”. And he regretted that it was up to the European courts to do the work of the Spanish government, which had put its desire to govern ahead of respect for the rule of law in Spain.
For his part, Mr Puigdemont announced the Catalan separatists’ intention to appeal against this judgment to the Court of Justice of the European Union in order to “defend to the end the fundamental rights of Catalans and Europeans”. “If this sentence is not reversed, it will be more difficult for political minorities defending causes that are embarrassing to States to exercise their rights”, he declared on Twitter.
See the judgments of the General Court in Cases T-115/20 (https://aeur.eu/f/7ws ) and T-272/21 (https://aeur.eu/f/7wu ). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)