The legal fight the president in exile, Carles Puigdemont, is tangled in to try and take his seat in the European Parliament is getting ever more technical. The president and minister Toni Comín, his fellow MEP-elect, have filed a complaint with Spain's Supreme Court that it has still not responded to an appeal they presented on 1st August and which has been with the relevant judge since 19th August without response.
The appeal in question was presented by lawyers for Puigdemont and Comín after the Supreme Court denied on 16th July cautionary measures they had called for so they could take their seats in the Parliament. Spain's Central Electoral Commission did not put their names, nor that of Oriol Junqueras, on the list of the country's newly-elected MEPs it officially submitted to the Parliament after May's election. It argued the disputed point that first the three would have to swear allegiance to the Spanish Constitution in person in the Congress in Madrid.
The law establishes, according to their complaint today, that in the case of such appeals, the parties involved have five days to submit challenges, should they so wish, after which the relevant court will have three days to give a ruling. "Having passed more than two months since the lodging of the reposición appeal against the ruling of 16th July 2019, it's clear that the court has far exceeded the period established in law," they write.
The filing notes that the Organic Law of the Judiciary says that "the unjustified or unmotivated failure to meet the legally established deadlines to hand down resolutions" constitutes a minor offence. As such, it calls on the chamber to "definitively resolve" the earlier appeal.
The filing says that the delay is "especially serious taking into account that the reposición appeal is lodged against a legal resolution which violates the right to effective judicial protection." It also notes that both the Spanish Constitution and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union recognise the universal right to having legal complaints heard within a reasonable period and without unjust delays.
As such, they argue the delay is causing not only a violation of their fundamental rights, and of those of the EU citizens that voted for them, but also "serious harm" to the general interest of the law being followed.