MADRID – The European Parliament has stripped of the immunity of Carles Puigdemont, the former separatist leader of Catalonia, clearing the way for Spain to make another attempt to extradite him from Belgium and convict him of sedition.
The European Parliament announced on Tuesday that the day before, a majority of its members had voted in a secret ballot for the lifting of the immunity of Mr Puigdemont and two other Catalan members of the Assembly who, in Spain because of a botched attempt to declare Catalonia, were charged independence in 2017. The Spanish judiciary has argued that their offer was unconstitutional.
Monday’s vote ended a protracted struggle by Mr Puigdemont and his colleagues to use their protection as elected members of the European Assembly to protect them from prosecution in Spain. It is now up to the Belgian judiciary to decide whether Mr Puigdemont should be sent back to the Spanish capital, Madrid, to be tried there.
“It is a sad day for the European Parliament,” said Puigdemont. “We have lost our immunity, but the European Parliament has lost more than that and, as a result, European democracy,” he said, adding that this was “a clear case of political persecution”.
The Spanish government welcomed the vote.
“The problems of Catalonia are not being solved in Europe or by Europe. They must be resolved in Spain by bringing all the Catalan armed forces to the table, ”said Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya. The vote showed that the European Parliament “respects the work of the judiciary in our country,” she added.
The decision of the European Parliament comes just a few weeks after the regional elections in Catalonia, which increased the majority of independent parties in the regional parliament. Separatist politicians have been in control since 2015, but the secession conflict has divided Catalan society while remaining a highly controversial issue in national politics.
Mr Puigdemont and some of his colleagues have been in Brussels since October 2017, shortly after the Spanish central government overthrew its regional government for holding a referendum that Spanish courts ruled illegal and then declared Catalonia’s independence.
In the past three years, Mr Puigdemont has successfully fended off attempts to extradite him from Belgium and Germany, where he was briefly arrested during a trip.
In January, judges in Belgium also denied a motion to extradite another former member of the Catalan regional government, Lluis Puig, who is facing similar charges in Spain. The Belgian court argued that the Spanish Supreme Court did not have the power to issue an arrest warrant for Mr Puig, adding that he should be brought before a regional court.
However, part of Mr Puigdemont’s previous government remained in Spain and stood before the country’s Supreme Court. Nine Catalans have been sentenced to prison terms after being convicted of crimes such as sedition and misuse of public funds.
A former Catalan leader, Oriol Junqueras, was also prevented from taking his seat in the European Parliament by the Spanish Supreme Court. Both he and Mr Puigdemont were elected to the assembly in 2019.
The European Parliament vote will allow a Spanish judge to reactivate a European arrest warrant against Mr Puigdemont, which was suspended in early 2020 when Mr Puigdemont and his colleagues took their seats in the European Assembly.
The Catalan heads of state and government are not the first members of the European Parliament to be deprived of immunity.
In 2019 the European Parliament lifted the immunity of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right party of the National Front in France. The case of Ioannis Lagos, convicted last year in Greece for his activities with the far-right Golden Dawn party, is still under investigation. The Greek government regards Golden Dawn as a criminal organization.
The Catalan case has divided politicians in Brussels, many of whom refuse to set a precedent for lawmakers to be brought to justice for political activity. The waiver of Mr Puigdemont’s immunity was approved by three fifths of the Members of the European Parliament.
It could take months for Belgian courts to rule on Spain’s latest extradition attempt against Mr Puigdemont and the other two Catalan leaders Antoni Comín and Clara Ponsatí.
The Brussels public prosecutor is currently examining the possibility of extending the legal proceedings in Belgium, said a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor.
Should the Belgian courts block the extradition request, the Catalans would still sit in the European Parliament, but without special immunity rights.
