At less than a week away from the opening of the new legislature in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, to be held on Tuesday 2nd July, the focus is on whether the political prisoner and exiles elected MEPs Carles Puigdemont, Oriol Junqueras, and Toni Comin will be able to get their full MEP status in the chamber, and with it, their immunity. Puigdemont and Comin, exiled in Brussels, will pose the direct question to the European Court in Luxembourg, a procedure that Junqueras will also have to go through after judge Marchena has forbidden his leaving Soto del Real prison to swear or promise to abide by the Spanish Constitution.
It is worth listening to the declarations by Professor Javier Pérez Royo on the TV3 programme FAQS, carefully. There, he claimed that Marchena’s court has committed an act of prevarication by not allowing Junqueras to appear before the Spanish Central Electoral Committee, this being, therefore, a crime against fundamental rights. Marchena’s attitude has, in practice, a double reading: it clearly harms Junqueras, but it also reinforces the idea that neither Puigdemont nor Comin can return to Spain to pick up their MEP credentials because the Supreme Court’s attitude of violation of their fundamental rights does not respect their situation.
That is why the battle that will be fought this week in Luxembourg and Strasbourg will end up being decisive. There is a real chance that Puigdemont and Comin may attain their aims and, if so, their situation, the situation of the exiles, and -as Pérez Royo states- maybe even that of the prisoners, will change. The simple hypothesis that the court could dictate precautionary measures that may allow them to get their status as MEPs whilst waiting for a final result, would have a sound political value.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the Spanish state has activated all its diplomatic and institutional resources so that this situation does not happen. In fact, the aspiration in Madrid is that Puigdemont and Comin’s claim shall be directly dismissed as coming from -they say- private parties. David is again confronting Goliath, but it would not be the first time that the giant falls in the arena of the Catalan case when the decision is taken in European countries and not in the Spanish capital.