The battle for amnesty is not only being decided in Spain, but in Europe, and the Government and the opposition are resorting to it to try to assert their positions on such a controversial issue.
The PP, which already allows itself to hint that it does not trust the Constitutional Court to decide its constitutionality, looks to Europe with debates such as the one it will host next week in the European Parliament.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo met today with foreign correspondents to analyze the impact of the law. With a large photo of one of their demonstrations against the amnesty, and the slogan Help Spain, the PP considers that it is “important that the undermining of the Constitution, the submission of justice to the interests of politicians, the forgiveness of crimes of corruption and the forgetting of terrorism crimes to those involved in the process is known and is present in international politics.”
Feijóo has lamented to journalists that the text "destroys" legal security in an EU state and the "deterioration of democracy" by causing "politicians to amnesty other politicians." And he recalled that "countries that tried something similar in Europe were expressly rejected by community bodies." The PP believes that “Spain could join Romania, Poland and Hungary as a country singled out for the attack on its rule of law.”
On the contrary, the acting Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, has today sent letters to the Vice President of the European Commission, Vera Jourová, and to the Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, to which he has attached copies of the proposal of amnesty law registered the day before by the PSOE in Congress, so that they can check first-hand the content of the norm. Bolaños has also asked both of them for a meeting, “as soon as possible,” to defend his position.
The minister has justified his letter to Vice President Jourová, in her capacity as head of Values and Transparency in the Commission, by stating that "this is a topic of interest to her", although warning her that the text must now follow the corresponding parliamentary procedure. At the requested appointment, Bolaños will explain the Government's position on the issue.
And he sent another letter to Commissioner Reynders, who last week already asked for explanations in this regard. The head of Justice, Pilar Llop, held an informal meeting with Reynders in Washington yesterday, and assured him that she understood his interest in the amnesty. But she told him that it is a domestic issue that must be previously debated in the Cortes.
The minister spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, warned however that it was a commitment of the Government to transfer the initiative to the European institutions, once registered. With the “tranquility,” she claimed, it is “impeccable from a legal point of view and anchored in the constitutional framework.”
