The opinion on Puigdemont divides the TC and provokes the anger of the progressive bloc
The return to work of the Constitutional Court next September will be marked by a new controversy: the decision of the Holiday Chamber, by two votes to one, to reject Carles Puigdemont's attempt to annul the national arrest warrant against him. The opinion of this Wednesday has provoked the anger of the progressive sector, which considers that it was not an urgent matter and should have waited for the rest of the magistrates. During the last six years, all the resources related to the process had been unanimously admitted for further debate in plenary session, criticize sources in this sector.
The discontent is aggravated by the fact that the decision was adopted by a majority that, they point out, is circumstantial. The plenary of the court is made up of seven progressive magistrates against four conservatives since last January, but, in the Holiday Room, the forces are distributed in favor of the latter. In this way, the inadmissibility of Puigdemont's appeal has gone ahead with two votes in favor of the conservatives César Tolosa and Concepción Espejel, and one against the progressive Laura Díez, who considers the “rush” of the pronouncement unjustified.
The Constitutional Court Prosecutor's Office has already announced that it will appeal this decision, so the debate will end up reaching the plenary session next September. According to the sources consulted, the Public Ministry also does not consider that there were no reasons of special urgency to reject Puigdemont's appeal: “It is not, therefore, a matter to be removed from the ordinary decisions of the court”.
individual vote
The two conservative magistrates of the Vacation Chamber have defended, for their part, that the appeal should be resolved without waiting for the rest of the colleagues because Puigdemont requested that the national arrest warrant be annulled in a very precautionary manner. As they have concluded, they had to rule on what would happen in a hypothetical scenario in which the former Catalan president set foot on Spanish soil this August. “Unlike the majority opinion, I do not consider that the simple request for precautionary measures by the appellants justifies in itself the need to decide on the admission of a matter by the Vacation Section”, criticizes. “I consider that, in addition to the request, there must be urgency in making a decision on these precautionary measures so that the granting or not of the same can make the protection lose its purpose”.
Having exposed this reasoning, Díez considers that it was not possible to rule on the arrest warrants for two reasons: “First, the appellants are not in Spanish territory, the only place where the decreed orders can be executed”. “Secondly, there cannot be an effective violation of rights that must be protected, since the appellants carry out their representative functions outside the national territory”.
Having ruled out the urgency, the magistrate also distances herself from her own decision to reject Puigdemont's appeal, which clung to the supposed parliamentary immunity that she enjoys for holding a seat in the European Parliament. The General Court of the EU (TGUE) ruled on July 5 that Puigdemont no longer enjoys this special protection, but, as the decision is still appealable, Díez considers that his arguments should have been analyzed more carefully.
“This decision that flatly rules out immunity is not that of an admission process,” he criticizes in the private vote. “Given the lack of firmness of the resolution of the General Court, in this procedure the existence of a possibility of violation of the right that justifies the admission of the appeal should be recognized”. “To this it should be added that this legal issue that has not yet been resolved by the Constitutional Court is an issue that transcends the specific case, as it raises a legal issue of relevant and general repercussion”.