BRUSSELS/MADRID, Nov. 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The European Commission does not see any collision between the amnesty law proposal and the community principles and rules, as the financial interests of the EU are saved and ‘lawfare’ cases are excluded, which means it understands that it is a domestic matter. whose evaluation will be up to the competent national authorities, according to the first impressions of their services, although the text is still under study.
This is what Europa Press is informed by community sources who indicate that the main concerns of the Community Executive regarding the future amnesty law were its impact on the financial interests of the EU and on the rule of law, specifically on the principle of separation of powers by the possibility that it covered the so-called ‘lawfare’ or ‘judicial war’ cases.
But they explain that, after that first look at the text registered last Monday in the Congress of Deputies by the PSOE, those two concerns have dissipated because both issues are left out of the bill. In any case, they clarify, the text is now being analyzed in depth by legal services before offering a formal opinion.
Thus, article 2 of the text details the cases that are excluded from the future amnesty, including among them “crimes that affect the financial interests of the European Union.”
Regarding ‘lawfare’, although it does not expressly mention it, it limits the amnestied acts to those “directly or indirectly linked to the so-called independence process”, pointing out crimes of usurpation of public functions, embezzlement, disobedience, public disorders or prevarication, which leaves were others such as money laundering, criminal organization or illicit association, document falsification or against the Public Treasury.
If there had been any reference to ‘lawfare’ in the bill, the European Commission would have had to act, say the aforementioned sources. But since it is only included in an agreement between political parties, the one signed by the PSOE and Junts last Thursday, it is outside the reach of Brussels.
In this sense, they point out that the Community Executive cannot become a “political actor” in the Member States. A different thing, they warn, is that this political agreement that includes the ‘lawfare’ has a legislative development.
However, for Brussels, the proposed law, in its current state, is a national matter whose control will correspond to the competent authorities, starting with Parliament, which must process and approve it, and ending with the Constitutional Court (TC), which will have the last word on its legality.
Along the same lines, the sources consulted point out that the political motivations for approving an amnesty law, whether those expressed in the statement of reasons – which justifies it by the need to reduce “institutional tension” – or the support of The pro-independence forces at the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as President of the Government are not relevant for the European Commission because it is the national bodies that must evaluate them.
Furthermore, they rule out any parallels with the case of Romania, when Brussels warned that it would act if an amnesty law drafted by the ruling Social Democratic Party was approved to pardon its then leader, Liviu Dragnea, who had been sentenced to three and a half years. in prison for abuse of power, although he had accumulated another sentence for electoral fraud.
The sources emphasize that in the Romanian case it was an amnesty law designed to directly benefit the leader of the ruling party that promoted it, a situation that does not occur in the Spanish scenario. Added to this is that the amnesty law never saw the light of day.
In any case, they emphasize that to activate article 7 of the EU Treaty, which allows the suspension of rights as a Member State, there must be a systematic non-compliance with the principles and rules of the EU, so a single infraction would not be enough to put it into motion, no matter how serious it was.
