Brussels demands from the Government "detailed" information about the amnesty while PSOE and Junts try to close the pact

The European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, has requested “detailed” information from the acting Government about the amnesty law that the PSOE and Junts are negotiating to enable the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and about which “serious concerns are expressed”. Meanwhile, the pact between both formations could be announced this Thursday.

“I would be grateful if you could provide me with more detailed information, in particular about the personal, material and temporal scope of this planned law,” Reynders wrote in a letter addressed to the acting ministers of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and of Justice, Pilar Llop.

The letter is known just one day after the PP activated the 'European route' considering that the time has come for the European Commission to act against the measure that will benefit the independentists, especially the figure of Carles Puigdemont.

I would be grateful if you could provide me with more detailed information, in particular on the personal, material and temporal scope of this planned law.

“The EU cannot look the other way when principles it claims to defend are violated.”. The acting Government is erasing Justice with a stroke of a pen, amnestying convicted, prosecuted and fugitives,” said the PP spokesperson in the European Parliament, Dolors Montserrat, this past Tuesday in a question sent to the Community Executive.

“The acting Government of Spain, after pardoning those convicted, lowering the crime of embezzlement and suppressing sedition as political payment, announces that it will give a massive political amnesty that flagrantly violates the rule of law and will cover 10-year crimes, including the misappropriation of public funds, against independent judicial decisions, in exchange for votes for the investiture,” summarized the MEP, who also reminded the Commission that the measure covers “terrorist organizations” such as, she says, the CDR or Tsunami Democratic.

The MEPs of PP and Ciudadanos, promoters of the initiative in Brussels, rely on articles 2 and 19 of the Treaty of the European Union, “to avoid a fraudulent mutation of the constitutional order and a de facto delegitimization of the judicial power.”

This step by Reynders, which the opposition to Sánchez had been calling for for some time, also comes at a time when negotiations between socialists and independentists are “stalled.”. Both parties are in Brussels waiting to finalize the remaining details of the pact, and are focusing above all precisely on the “legal fit” of the amnesty law.. Negotiating sources assure that they are not talking about names, and allege that it is a “very important” rule, which is why, they say, “they have to do a good job.”

“Many thanks to Commissioner Reynders for this important move. Europe is already asking Sánchez for explanations for the amnesty he intends to grant to Puigdemont and many others responsible for very serious crimes.. Work pays off. We continue working,” the leader of Ciudadanos in the European Parliament, and general secretary of the orange party, Adrián Vázquez, has written on social networks, one of the most active voices – if not the most – in the EU against the measure being prepared. Sánchez to tie the Junts votes for his investiture.

“The EU is on alert for the worrying steps that Sánchez is taking in violating the rule of law with the amnesty,” said Montserrat in response to the letter from the Commissioner of Justice.. “We celebrate that the EU is acting and we thank the European Commission for demanding information from the Government regarding the amnesty after the complaints that we have been making from the European Parliament as well as citizens themselves every day when it comes to expressing their indignation,” he added, before remember that “Sánchez is not trustworthy” and that PP is not going to allow “the false story that the amnesty is for coexistence and harmony to reach Europe.”

On the other hand, one of the keys, clarified by sources consulted by 20minutos, is that “the text” of the law is not yet known, since it has not been registered and is still being negotiated.. For those most critical of the rule, a kind of positioning by Brussels was urgent in the face of what, for example, the PP considers an “attack” on the rule of law.. From Cs it was Maite Pagaza who warned the Community Executive that the situation proposed by the Government goes “against the Treaties.”

At the last minute, the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, responded to the European Commissioner's request with another letter in which he stated that the two issues in which he is interested in the communication from Brussels “do not correspond to the scope of decision of the Government of Spain, since both will have to be processed and resolved in the Cortes Generales”.

Specifically, Bolaños explains that “the Government of Spain is in office, which prevents it from sending bills to the Cortes Generales”, so “any law proposal that can be registered in the Congress of Deputies will come from the groups parliamentarians and not the Council of Ministers”. And he concludes by stating that “as always” they will be “delighted” to work together, informing them of “as many issues as they wish to know”, in addition to “providing all the information” they require.. “If a proposed amnesty law is registered, rest assured that we will explain all the details of the law, as well as the Government's position.”

In this context, after days of negotiations and rumors about the date of the investiture that never materialized, everything indicates that the negotiating parties are already very close to finally closing an agreement in Brussels that would allow the socialists to revalidate four more years of government. What they still have to reveal is the political agreement for Sánchez's investiture and what scope the future amnesty law will have.. The pact could be announced this Thursday and thus the deadlines for setting the debate in Congress would be accelerated, which could be next week. The parties “continue negotiating.”