The European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs approved the lifting of Clara Ponsatí’s immunity as an MEP in a report that attributed an alleged offence to her for which she is not being investigated. The basis for the immunity hearing, the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued for the former Catalan education minister by the Spanish Supreme Court, accuses Ponsatí of a crime of sedition. But the "Proposal for a European Parliament decision" issued on the matter by the committee states that she is also charged with misuse of public funds, which the EAW does not contemplate.
The waiving of Ponsatí's immunity was approved on Tuesday in the European chamber's Committee on Legal Affairs together with similar requests from the Spanish court to waive the immunity of Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín, and the waivers on all three pro-independence Catalan MEPs are expected to be put to a vote in the plenary session of Parliament in the week of March 8th.
Misuse of public funds
The report, prepared by MEP Angel Dzahambazki of the ultra-conservative Bulgarian party IMRO states that the lifting of Clara Ponsatí's immunity has been requested due to accusations of an "alleged offence of sedition, as laid down in Articles 544 and 545 of the Spanish Criminal Code, and of an offence of misuse of public funds, as laid down in Article 432 of the Spanish Criminal Code in conjunction with Article 252 thereof". From there, and after setting out its argument, the report decides that the immunity of the MEP should be waived so that she can be tried and instructs the president of Parliament to communicate this to the Spanish authorities and to her.
But in fact, Ponsatí is only investigated for an alleged offence of sedition. In the early stages of the case, the former minister was investigated for possible spending on the 2017 independence referendum by the Catalan education department, but the matter was dropped after one of the more bizarre episodes in the 2019 Supreme Court trial, when rival teams of accountants attempted to estimated the costs of using public schools during the referendum. Thus, this offence was not included in the European Arrest Warrant issued by Llarena in November 2019.
On the other hand, former president Carles Puigdemont and his health minister Toni Comín are being investigated, as was culture minister Lluís Puig, for the crimes of misuse of public funds on the referendum.
A single rapporteur
However, despite the fact that the documentation sent by the Supreme Court does not contemplate the crime of misuse of funds by Ponsatí, despite the fact that the immunity request was debated in committee, and that the three MEPs each appeared to defend themselves, and subsequently a month was allowed for the drafting of the report, Dzhambazki's text erroneously attributes the same alleged offences to all three MEPs.
The explanation for the surprising error could lie in the fact that one single rapporteur, the Bulgarian MEP, was given the job of preparing the reports for all three cases. In fact, this was one of the points that the Catalan MEPs protested about in the hearing, arguing that each of the cases should have its own rapporteur.
The rapporteur's report, which was leaked last week by the Spanish newspaper ABC, argues that the request for the immunity waiver is made in connection with events that allegedly occurred in 2017, and were therefore prior to Ponsatí's acquisition of MEP status, which she gained in February 2020.
Among the other arguments of the document is that "it is not for the European Parliament to query the merits of national legal and judicial systems."
In the main image, right to left, Clara Ponsatí with Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín on Wednesday morning at the European Parliament / Efe