EU Parliament rule of law debate ‘humiliation’ for Spain, says MEP

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The debate on Spain’s “democratic quality” to be held in the European Parliament in Strasbourg next week is a “humiliation” for the country, centre-right MEP Esteban González Pons (EPP) said on Thursday.

On Thursday, the European Parliament officially added a debate on the Spanish amnesty law to the agenda of its next plenary session titled ‘Threats to the rule of law as a consequence of the government agreement in Spain’ – supported by EPP, Renew, ECR and ID.

The government called the debate after it passed Sanchez’s Socialist PSOE party and Basque and Catalan separatist forces agreed to the controversial amnesty law for those involved in the 2017 secessionist attempt in Catalonia.

In statements to the press, MEP González Pons of the Spanish opposition party Partido Popular (PP/EPP) said it was a “tragedy” for Spain that the European Parliament had to “investigate the quality of Spanish democracy”.

“Then we will hear from the lips of [MEP and Catalan leader] Carles Puigdemont what Spain has really committed itself to, and I assure you that there will be historic Members of the European Parliament in defence of democracy who will speak loud and clear about the challenge or the damage that it [the agreements] will cause to the rule of law,” he warned.

Rule of law issues have so far only been debated in the European Parliament about Poland, Hungary and Malta, the PP said on Thursday, adding that the debate on the quality of democracy was, therefore, a “very worrying” development and a “consequence of the serious democratic deficit” in the country.

However, other debates on the rule of law have been held in the past, including in Greece, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

“What has been agreed [the pacts with separatists] in Waterloo [Puigdemont’s residence] is going to be examined in Strasbourg,” Pons warned in statements to journalists at the parliament’s headquarters in Madrid, a few minutes after Sánchez’s investiture debate.

Catalan and Basque separatist parties were crucial to Sánchez getting his term as prime minister renewed for another four years on Thursday. He won 179 votes out of 350 seats in the Spanish parliament.

The PP claims that the text of the amnesty law registered by the PSOE in parliament this week is a preliminary version of the final text, and to know all the details of the text, legal experts will have to wait for the amendments that the separatist parties may submit.

“The European Union is listening to the Spanish judges”, Pons also stressed, referring to the many judges who, in an unprecedented gesture, have gone beyond their supposed “political neutrality” to publicly oppose the extraordinary amnesty law approved by the government.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)