The Central Electoral Board (JEC) will respond this Thursday to the European Parliament that it cannot issue credentials to those who do not meet the requirements established by Spanish law, one of which is to abide by the Constitution in Madrid before the electoral body itself, in relation to the request made by the president of the European Parliament, the Maltese Roberta Metsola (Popular Group), on whether the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont is an MEP or not.
Metsola sent a letter to the JEC on September 22 asking it to resolve the mismatch between the 59 MEPs that Spain is entitled to in the European Parliament and the 55 that it has officially notified by virtue of the May 2019 elections. It is a situation that affects both Puigdemont (Junts) and his fellow rank-and-file Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, who never went to Madrid to promise the Constitution so as not to be arrested, and Jordi Solé (ERC), who despite having no legal pending with justice, did not promise the Constitution at the time.
The four serve as MEPs by virtue of a decision by the former president of the European Parliament, the Italian Social Democrat David Sassoli, who died in January, after a ruling by the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) in December 2019 that recognized the immunity of Oriol Junqueras , also elected in those elections, from the moment of his election at the polls and the proclamation of the results.
At first, the European Parliament had denied access to their seats to Puigdemont, Comín and Solé after the JEC informed the European Parliament that they should be considered vacant because they had not completed the procedures to take office. Ponsatí won his seat in 2020 when Brexit (the United Kingdom's exit from the EU) came into force, which led to a change in the distribution of seats.
In his letter sent to the electoral body in September, Metsola reminded Spain that "it has a duty of loyal cooperation with the European Parliament" which implies, among other things, "the obligation to notify a complete list of officially elected deputies in order to allow the European Parliament to carry out its function with the total number of its members". "I invite the Kingdom of Spain to designate without delay the number of people corresponding to the number of seats that have been assigned to it," concluded the President of the European Parliament, a member of the European People's Party.
Metsola recalled in the letter the judgment of July 6, 2022 of the General Court of the EU in which it dismissed the appeal filed by Puigdemont and Comín against the initial decision of the European Parliament not to allow them to take their seat. The ruling states that, in order to verify credentials, "Parliament must base itself on the list of officially elected candidates notified by the national authorities, which, by definition, is drawn up based on the officially proclaimed results and once these authorities have resolved the possible controversies arising in relation to the application of national law".
The intention of the Electoral Board, which meets this Thursday in Congress starting at 1:00 p.m., is not to limit itself to providing a list of names but to recall the entire Spanish procedure for issuing credentials and recall the reasons why it does not consider pertinent to issue those of those who do not meet all the formal requirements.
Metsola's letter stems from a request to this effect from the chairman of the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee, Ciudadanos MEP Adrián Vázquez, who last May announced that the credentials of the four MEPs could not be "verified". A mandatory procedure that all MEPs must comply with when they have the minutes and which confirms that there are no compatibilities with the position, a formalism that had been delayed due to the pandemic, and after the departure of the British deputies when Brexit occurred.
