The Congress of Deputies will definitively approve the controversial amnesty law at the end of May after lifting the veto that the PP will push in the Senate on May 14, two days after the Catalan elections. The schedule of the law, which has marked the beginning of this legislature, is now accelerating after the PP’s majority in the Senate applied a strategy to delay its progress. On Monday afternoon, the Popular Party imposed its control in the upper house to move forward with the report of the committee against the law commissioned to the Constitutional and Judicial Committee. The conclusions have been based on a report by the Senate lawyers questioning the constitutionality of the law and concluding that it could violate European Union rights.
The Senate Committee on Justice and Constitutional Affairs met on Monday afternoon to draw up a report on the amnesty law, which includes the input from experts and, most importantly, the PP’s proposal to veto the project sent from the Congress on March 14 when it was approved there by the majority. The Senate’s report must be endorsed in a committee meeting on Thursday, May 9, and the PP’s veto proposal to the law will be voted on and approved in a plenary session on May 14. After the plenary vote in the Senate, the project – expected to be vetoed by the PP in that chamber, given its absolute majority – will return to the Congress, which will have the opportunity to lift that opposition in a plenary session to be convened at the end of May. It is expected that the final vote will be on Thursday, May 30. Once the law enters into force, it could benefit the leaders of the independence process convicted by the Supreme Court and the current Junts candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat, former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. The courts will have two months to apply the law once it comes into effect, but some effects, such as the lifting of precautionary measures, must be issued “immediately” when the law is published in the Official State Gazette (BOE).
The PP has based its opposition to the law in the Senate on a report commissioned to the lawyers of that committee which determines “the unconstitutionality of the norm” and lists a series of rights that would “conflict with the legal framework of the European Union.” The report against the amnesty law coming from the Senate includes the main arguments of the experts’ report, concluding that the law sent by the Congress would require “a prior constitutional reform for its implementation” and that there is a “plausible” possibility of “a controversy” before the Constitutional Court because they believe that the law would present several “infringements that would affect fundamental principles and rights of both the Constitution and the treaties of the European Union.”
Among the constitutionally questionable principles cited by the Senate’s report are those of “legality in criminal matters and legal certainty” due to “the indeterminacy of the material and temporal scope of the amnesty, without reference to specific criminal offenses or categories of crimes based on the protected legal interests”; the equal treatment and fundamental right, “given the delimitation of the material scope of the amnesty, based on a specific ideological motive and outside the objective basis of the protected legal interests in criminal offenses”; the prohibition of arbitrariness of public authorities “due to the circumstances related to the public context of the presentation of the bill” which could be indicative that the amnesty responds to partisan interests”; and the right to effective judicial protection in criminal matters, “regarding the urgency of the application procedure and the claim that the immediate lifting of precautionary measures is not hindered by the suspension of the criminal proceedings for any reason.”
The Senate lawyers’ report, adopted by the committee, also concludes that the amnesty could contradict “obligations imposed by European Union law in the areas of terrorism and protection of the Union’s financial interests,” according to various EU directives. The report warns the Congress and the Cortes in general that if they finally approve the project, they would run a “risk” since that decision “could lead the judicial bodies responsible for applying the amnesty to raise a preliminary question before the Court of Justice of the European Union, or a question of unconstitutionality before the Constitutional Court.” The Socialist group in the Senate, however, denounced the PP’s veto and criticized the content of the report accepted by the committee, as they believe it has “overstepped its function” by stating that the law is unconstitutional. The PSOE has pointed out that the report has only taken into account the conclusions of the 15 experts as confirmation of their own “theses of the unconstitutionality of the law, when there have been all kinds of contributions to this debate”. They also note that the same occurred with some of the reports requested, which, according to the socialists, “show a clear bias except for the one issued by the Venice Commission.” The PSOE refers to a series of conclusions of that consultative body of the Council of Europe, requested by the PP, in which the essence and spirit of the law are endorsed but with some criticisms regarding its expedited processing or the extension of the temporal scope of its application.
