Brussels, 06/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - In a letter sent to the European Parliament President, Nicole Fontaine, the President of the Spanish Supreme Court, Javier Delgado, is surprised (over the case of the call for the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of Mr Berlusconi and Mr Dell'Utri) that they can consider the Presidency of the European Parliament as a "foreign authority" for a Spanish judge. Mr Delgado returns to the structure of the jurisdictional system of the European Union which he underlines is similar to that of Federal States. Under these conditions, I believe that it is not possible to consider the European Parliament as a foreign authority, he wrote adding: while accepting your decision, I must when keeping in mind the spirit of the functioning and the aims of the European Union, inform you that it is with a certain sadness that I address myself to your excellency as a foreign authority. Concluding by calling on the President to send him the documents that have been addressed to her on 11 July 2000 in the framework of the call for the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of Mr Berlusconi and Mr Dell'Utri, so that they may be returned to the EP by the Minister for Justice. (On the Berlusconi case, see EUROPE of 14 May, p.7).
During the conference of presidents on Thursday in Strasbourg, the Spanish Socialist Enrique Baron regretted that a national judge be forced to remind the Parliament of the aims of European integration. The Finnish Green Heidi Hautala felt, despite the denials from Mrs Fontaine, that there would have been one hundred ways not to take a year over this case.