The leader of Junts Carles Puigdemont awaits the ruling to be announced this Thursday from the European justice system regarding the amnesty to reactivate his return to Spain in the courts. However, whatever the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) says, the expectation is that the return of the former president of the Generalitat will still have to wait a few months. According to legal sources, the national arrest warrant against him will not be revoked until the Constitutional Court (TC) rules, presumably in October, on the appeal for protection he filed against the decision of Supreme Court (TS) judge Pablo Llarena not to apply the amnesty.
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These sources explain that the stance of the European justice on the amnesty would not affect the arrest warrant at all, although if it is favorable to Puigdemont’s interests, he will try to have Llarena revoke his ruling. The explanation is technical. The CJEU is resolving today the preliminary questions raised by the Court of Auditors and the National Court. The auditing body halted the application of the amnesty in the accounting process for the use of public funds to organize the October 1, 2017 referendum. The counselor in charge of the matter wanted to ask Europe if with the 1-O European funds and interests could have been affected that would prevent those responsible for the organization from being amnestied.
Judge Llarena argues that the former president personally profited from the October 1 referendum
This is one of the arguments that Llarena precisely used to not apply the amnesty to Puigdemont for the crime of embezzlement. However, the instructor used another argument. He argued that even if the amnesty were legal and declared constitutional – as has already happened – the facts for which Puigdemont is prosecuted fall within the exceptions contemplated by the law itself. The rule endorsed the criminal forgetfulness for all those with pending criminal, accounting, or administrative proceedings linked to the independence process in Catalonia except – among other cases – those who had personally profited from public money. The thesis of both Llarena and the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court is that the leaders of the procés personally benefited because by preparing the referendum with public money they did not use their own capital and, therefore, it represented an economic benefit for them.
Legal sources explain that regarding this interpretation, the CJEU should not delve into it because it is the exclusive power of domestic law to be resolved by national courts. That is, the one who has to review the interpretation about embezzlement and personal profit will be the Constitutional Court.
If the CJEU determines that no European interests are affected, the Court of Auditors must grant amnesty
Likewise, if the European justice endorses the amnesty and denies that the European legal order or its funds have been affected, it is likely that Puigdemont’s defense will request the immediate application of the amnesty and the revocation of the arrest warrant against him, which has kept him in Belgium since 2017.
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Until this Thursday at 10 in the morning when the sentence is read publicly, its content is unknown. However, the affected parties do not overlook the opinion of the CJEU Advocate General in which it is argued that the Amnesty law does not affect European funds nor the European regulations on the fight against terrorism – as the National Court raised in the preliminary question about the case affecting the CDR –. Furthermore, it holds that the approval of the law of oblivion took place in a context of political and social reconciliation and did not constitute a self-amnesty, so it complied with the jurisprudential standards established by the European Court of Human Rights.
The opinion of the European court’s Advocate General already held that the ‘procés’ did not affect European funds
If the ruling issued today confirms the Advocate General’s thesis, the most direct consequence will be the dismissal of the accounting process of the Court of Auditors, which claims 3.1 million euros from about thirty former high-ranking officials, including Puigdemont and former president Artur Mas, and the dismissal of the terrorism case opened against several members of the CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Republic).
However, both Puigdemont’s arrest warrant and the amnesty for the already convicted leaders, including the former vice president of the Generalitat and current president of ERC Oriol Junqueras, who is still disqualified, will have to wait for the TC to rule on the interpretation and scope of the crime of embezzlement, unless the CJEU surprises and ventures to say something about it.
