Spain’s conservative People’s Party (PP) has called on the EU to intervene in the controversial Catalan amnesty law introduced by the ruling Socialists, saying it requires the kind of action the bloc has previously taken when rule of law concerns have arisen in Poland, Hungary and Romania.
Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), which was narrowly defeated by the PP in July’s inconclusive general election, agreed to the amnesty after the two main Catalan pro-independence parties made it a condition of supporting the formation of a new Socialist-led government with a majority in parliament.
The draft amnesty law would apply to hundreds of people involved in the illegal push for Catalan independence between 2012 and last year. They include Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan regional president who fled Spain to avoid arrest after masterminding the botched secession attempt in 2017.
Right-wing Spanish parties have accused Pedro Sánchez, the PSOE leader and caretaker prime minister, of degrading democracy and using the amnesty as a cynical ploy to stay in power. Around 70% of Spanish voters are opposed to the move and huge demonstrations were held across Spain on Sunday.
The PP stepped up its attack on the bill as the Spanish Congress prepared for the investiture debate, which will almost certainly result in Sánchez winning a new term on Thursday.
PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said Spain was facing an “unprecedented situation” and called on the EU to intervene.
“Tomorrow’s investiture is a done deal … and the amnesty is a direct payment for the votes the [PSOE] needs to form a government,” Feijóo told reporters in Madrid on Tuesday morning. “And who pays for it? The Spanish people, but also, in my opinion, Europe, because the deterioration of a democracy like Spain’s … will obviously have consequences for the European institutions.”
He noted that the EU had intervened in the past when democratic norms and the rule of law had come under scrutiny in other member states. “It happened in Poland, in Romania, in Hungary, and we don’t think our case is radically different from those countries,” he said.
Esteban González Pons, a PP MEP who is also the party’s institutional vice-secretary, drew parallels with the EU’s intervention in Romania four years ago.
“The most similar case was in Romania in 2019, when a socialist government tried to introduce an amnesty law that would grant amnesty to socialist politicians who had been convicted of corruption and other things,” he said. “When that happened, [then European Commission President] Jean-Claude Juncker visited Bucharest and warned Romania that going ahead with the law could affect its position in the EU, and Romania agreed to a referendum on the issue, which it lost with 80% of the vote.”
He also took the extreme step of comparing the amnesty to the kind of legislation introduced during Franco’s fascist dictatorship, which lasted almost four decades.
The law “declares a decade of impunity in Catalonia, because all the crimes committed in Catalonia over the course of a decade will be covered by the amnesty, from terrorism to political corruption,” he said. “So everything that happens in other parts of Spain is a crime, but in Catalonia everything can be forgiven. If you don’t mind my saying so, this is the kind of law we saw during Francoism”.
EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders has already written to the current Spanish government asking for more details on the proposed law, saying the issue had raised serious concerns and had become “a matter of considerable importance in the public debate”.
In a polite but blunt response last week, the caretaker government pointed out that the Spanish constitution does not allow caretaker administrations to submit legislation to parliament. Any such legislation, it said, would be proposed by political parties. However, it offered to provide the Commission with more details once the amnesty bill had been tabled.
Sánchez – who began negotiations to form a new government after Feijóo proved unable to do so, even with the support of the far-right Vox party and other smaller groupings – has claimed that the amnesty is needed to heal the wounds of the past and guarantee peaceful coexistence in Spain.
He has also urged the PP to show “common sense” and stop trying to stir things up.
“I ask them to respect the result of the ballot box and the legitimacy of the government we are about to form,” Sánchez said on Saturday. “I ask them to be brave and say no to the bear hug of the extreme right and to abandon the reactionary path they’re currently taking towards the abyss. We will govern for all Spaniards, for four more years of social progress and coexistence.