Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comin y Clara Ponsati served as MEPs during the last European legislature thanks to an illegality committed by the former President of the European Parliament between July 2019 and 11 January 2022, when David Sassoli, a member of the Socialist group, died. Sassoli revoked the decision taken by his predecessor in office, Antonio Tajani (conservative) because The names of Puigdemont and Comín were not on the list sent to the European Chamber by the Central Electoral Board (JEC) of Spain.
Tajani refused to accredit Puigdemont and Comín (Ponsatí entered later, after the reorganization of the chamber due to Brexit) because that It would have been a violation of the competence of the Spanish State.not the European Parliament. The judgment states in this regard: “The President of the Parliament has no power to check the accuracy of this list (the list of members sent by the JEC), otherwise the division of powers between the Union and the Member States would be violated.”
Thus, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rejects the appeal filed by Puigdemonta resource that stopped making sense when Tajani’s substitute, Sassoli, decided to admit the former Catalan president and former minister Comín into the chamber, accredit themselves as MEPs, even collect arrears and enjoy the parliamentary immunity that has allowed Puigdemont to move around Europe practically without restrictions.
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The ruling states that “the President of the European Parliament could not deviate from the list of elected deputies that the Spanish authorities had officially notified him of” and that “He simply did what he was obliged to do: to take note of the list of elected deputies notified by the Spanish authorities, which constituted for him a pre-existing situation derived from decisions that had been taken at the national level.”
For not swearing the Constitution in Madrid
Although the court decision has been taken Five years after the appeal was filedin 2019, it may have real consequences. To begin with, the European Parliament has prevented Toni Comín from being accredited in this legislature for the same reasons that Tajani alleged in his day and that the CJEU has ratified without any further appeal being possible. It is therefore likely that Comín has to give up his seat Next on the list, someone who will have to swear or promise the Constitution in Madrid, which is the requirement that Puigdemont and Comín failed to meet to appear on the JEC list and that Sassoli ignored in an illegal decision.
Another consequence that the sentence could have is that Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí or the party, Junts per Catalunya, may be required tothe return of all amounts collected during the years in which they were not supposed to serve as MEPs.
