The European Parliament has had to correct the report it approved on Tuesday on lifting the immunity from prosecution of MEP Clara Ponsatí. It took this action after confirming that, as earlier reported by ElNacional.cat, the parliamentary document had misrepresented the case of the former Catalan education minister, stating that she had been charged with an offence of misuse of public funds, when in fact the Spanish Supreme Court did not contemplate that accusation in the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for Ponsatí .
The report, drafted by ultra-conservative Bulgarian MEP Angel Dzhambazki, stated that the Supreme Court had asked for Ponsatí's immunity to be suspended for two alleged offences: sedition, and misuse of public funds.
Sedition, but not misuse of funds
However, the EAW issued by the Spanish judge in November 2019 did not accuse the former minister of this economic offence, following a surreal scene in the 2019 independence leaders' trial when prosecutors attempted to quantify the education minister's misuse of funds by calculating an imagined rental cost for using public schools as referendum polling stations.
After that trial, the Spanish Supreme Court accused president Carles Puigdemont and health minister Toni Comín of both sedition and misuse of funds, with culture minister Lluís Puig accused only of misuse of funds, and education minister Ponsatí facing a charge of sedition.
Errata
The European Parliament has thus today added an errata to the report for the Together for Catalonia party representative, correcting the information it provides, and on which the Parliament will vote, to communicate that the Spanish Supreme Court has requested the suspension of Ponsatí's immunity "for an alleged offence of sedition, as laid down in articles 544 and 545 of the Spanish Criminal Code".
This Thursday morning, sources in the European chamber's Committee on Legal Affairs admitted that the content of the report was being evaluated and that if any errors were found, the amendment would be made public, and this was done in the early hours of the afternoon.
According to these sources, Parliament's rules of procedure make it possible to correct errors in approved and published texts, even in the case of directives and regulations.
In this case, the correction to the documentation for the upcoming plenary has been added to Ponsatí's file, as a separate document alongside the report approved on Tuesday by the members of the committee, in which the rapporteur's error still appears.
In the main image, Clara Ponsatí, with Carles Puigdemont, yesterday in Parliament where they appeared in a joint press conference / Efe