BRUSSELS, March 29 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, has decided to refer to the Committee on Legal Affairs the analysis of the request to defend immunity sent by the former Minister and MEP of Junts Clara Ponsatí, who returned to Brussels after her arrest in Barcelona the day before Metsola has made a bias against the Catalan independence movement ugly.
At the start of the plenary session held in the European capital, the Maltese conservative confirmed that she had received Ponsatí’s request for protection and limited herself to informing that the matter had been “referred” to the legal affairs committee, which It is chaired by the MEP of Ciudadanos Adrián Vázquez.
Shortly after, in a motion of order, Ponsatí has ??asked for the floor to criticize Metsola for what he considers “inaction” before his request to defend immunity and protection of the independence of the European Parliament: “I have not received any response and, therefore, As far as I know, he has taken no action other than bureaucratically passing the matter over to the Legal Affairs Committee.”
“I assume that you have not heard my announcement at the beginning of the session so I ask you to listen again to what I have said”, Metsola has settled, in reply to Ponsatí after she regretted not having received a response to her request minutes after that the president of the Eurocámara inform that she was referring the matter to the competent commission.
In her speech, the Junts MEP had asked Metsola if this “lack of compliance in defending immunity in the face of an illegal detention of a MEP, which has never happened before, is a policy of the presidency or an attitude that reserves the Catalans”.
For her part, the leader of the Popular Party delegation, Dolors Montserrat, has criticized Junts for using the European Parliament as if it were the Parliament of Catalonia and has insisted that democracy in Europe “defends itself against those who trample it.”
After assuring that Ponsatí and the rest of the Junts deputies are “fugitives from justice” who sell themselves as “victims”, he has pointed to the role of Pedro Sánchez for “giving in” to the independence movement “for fear of losing power”. “The dignity of the country is never sold, not even for a handful of votes. Neither immunity, nor impunity,” said Montserrat, in a message addressed to the socialist bench that has received no response.
For his part, Jordi Cañas, from Ciudadanos, has applauded Metsola’s management, referring the issue to the legal affairs committee, chaired by the ‘orange’ MEP Adrián Vázquez, and has indicated that the plenary session “is not the space” to deal with this issue, calling for avoiding “a political show” to be staged.
In contrast, the ERC MEP, Diana Riba, has insisted on the lawsuit against Metsola to defend Ponsatí’s immunity as a European parliamentarian and ask the Spanish justice system to “abide by European legality” and “abandon judicial Brexit” in the that, in his opinion, is Judge Llarena.
