Today, the Constitutional Court (TC) will not finally address the debate on the precautionary suspension of the disqualification of Oriol Junqueras and the former councilors of the Generalitat Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa and Jordi Turull. The magistrates of the guarantee court were scheduled to debate the three presentations on the matter – prepared by the president of the TC, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, José María Macías and César Tolosa –, all of them agreeing to reject the precautionary measure, but according to the sources consulted the matters have been removed in extremis from the agenda. With the objective, they point, of “homogenize” the three draft resolutions with an argument that promotes unanimity in the refusal to suspend the disqualification sentence imposed by the Supreme Court on the pro-independence politicians. All of them demand that the measure, which prevents them from being candidates in elections, be annulled until the TC resolves their appeals for protection, so as not to cause them irreparable harm in the event that it finally agrees with them in their fight with the high court.
But the pronouncement of the guardian of the Constitution on this suspension – which it is assumed that the majority of the magistrates will oppose – will have to wait. At the very least, to the last Plenary Session of the year, which will foreseeably be held from the 16th. It will be then, with some agreed presentations, when the TC slams the door on Junqueras, Romeva, Bassa and Turull, who therefore will remain disabled (the ERC leader is until 2031) waiting for what the TC says about the Supreme Court’s refusal to amnesty them for the crime of embezzlement (for which Carles Puigdemont is also prosecuted), on the grounds that they obtained a personal financial benefit – one of the assumptions that the Amnesty Law excludes from its application – by not paying out of pocket for the independence process in Catalonia in 2017, which was financed with public funds.
The three presentations essentially coincide in the arguments to reject the precautionary suspension. On the one hand, They do not see irreparable harm in the fact that they cannot stand for election.given that there are no elections in sight in which their political formations (ERC and Junts) are going to attend. On the other hand, they defend that accessing the precautionary suspension would mean anticipating the TC’s decision on the amparo appeals (which precisely seek to annul the disqualification penalties with the application of the Amnesty Law). Furthermore, they make clear the prevalence of the general interest faced with the risk that, with the sentence imposed by the Supreme Court provisionally suspended, they would return to public office after having been convicted, precisely, that they violated the principle of democratic legality.
Harsh reproach to the State Attorney’s Office
However, as LA RAZÓN reported yesterday, Macías’ presentation incorporated a harsh reproach to the State Attorney’s Officealigned with the arguments of the pro-independence politicians in this matter (unlike the Prosecutor’s Office), understanding that it has skirted the assessment of “the serious disturbance to general interests” that this suspension would entail, according to the former member of the General Council of the Judiciary.
Thus, once the court’s lawyers pass these proposed resolutions through the sieve of homogeneity, the three presentations (not a unified one) in the same sense will be taken to the Plenary Session to be submitted to the criteria of the twelve magistrates.
It remains to be seen whether the president of the Constitutional Court also brings to the last plenary session of the year the decision on the suspension that Puigdemont seeks of his arrest and prison orderwhich is maintained by Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena and which prevents him from returning to Spain if he does not want to be arrested. If not, the former president of the Generalitat would have to wait until next year.
To know the TC’s position on the protections, however, we will have to go even further in the calendar. And the fact is that the court of guarantees wants to know first the pronouncement of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the adaptation of the Amnesty Law to community law and its fit into the Rule of Law standards promoted by the Union. A resolution that is unlikely to be known before February of next year, once the EU attorney general has already made his conclusions public (ruling out that the amnesty would affect the financial interests of the European Union). After that expected ruling, the TC will activate the resolution of the amparo appeals, which if approved would mean the annulment of the “procés” sentences for violation of fundamental rights.