The former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has the cards laid on the EU board. Not only does the European Parliament now doubt his MEP act, but the European court has yet to resolve two issues that will be key to his judicial future. It will depend on all this that the president who proclaimed the independence of Catalonia on October 27, 2017 sits before the Supreme Court to face a trial for the crimes of sedition and embezzlement of public funds.
In these five years since he fled Spain to avoid facing a judicial process that would take him to prison, the former president has achieved the protection of different countries and courts. Since 2017, an arrest and delivery order has weighed on him. His decision to stand in the European elections when he was already on the run allowed him to achieve parliamentary immunity, which has empowered him to move, not without some scare, and not be handed over to the Supreme Court.
Right now there are several pending decisions that could turn his situation around. The latest movement of the European Parliament has harmed him and could affect the rest of the pending issues. The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, has sent a letter to the Central Electoral Board to clarify whether Puigdemont, along with former ministers Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, have the status of elected candidates. None of the three went before the JEC, after the May 2019 elections to swear or promise the Constitution because they had to go in person and if they did they would be arrested. The previous president of the European Parliament exceptionally allowed them to receive the minutes, but now the new president has opened the door so that, due to not having done the pertinent procedure, their condition can be withdrawn.
This movement occurs weeks before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) holds a hearing – on November 25 – to study the appeal filed by Puigdemont against the decision of the European Parliament to withdraw his immunity. For the former president, it is key to maintain this privilege to prevent him from being arrested in any European country, as happened in Sardinia (Italy) in September 2021.
Time is running out. The decision of the CJEU will be fundamental for the mobility of Puigdemont in the coming months until the same court resolves the preliminary ruling raised by the magistrate who is instructing the case of the procés in the Supreme Court, Pablo Llarena. Belgium, the country where the former leader of Junts currently resides, is reluctant to hand him over to Spain to be tried for a crime of sedition. The CJEU has to rule whether, for the sake of international cooperation within the EU, the Belgian justice can interfere in the internal functioning of the Spanish justice or if, on the contrary, it is obliged to hand it over.
What works in favor of the former president is that neighboring countries do not look favorably on the application of this crime due to the events that occurred in Catalonia during the autumn of 2017. The proof is not only Belgium but Germany, since a court German allowed his delivery in 2018 only if he was tried for the crime of embezzlement, for using public funds to organize the 1-O referendum, but denied the major with sedition.
Puigdemont has already managed to win five years and has managed to put the Supreme Court in check on several occasions, which has been disavowed by his European colleagues. However, sources from the high court do not conceive of another option that sooner or later the former president will be tried, as has happened to the rest of the members of his Government.
The objective of the independence leader is to buy time while the Government modifies the Penal Code and lowers the crime of sedition, which would help him in his international battle. And at that time, the European Court of Human Rights is expected to rule on whether what the Spanish justice system did with the independentistas is in line with European law and standards.
