Hemicycle of the Parliament of Catalonia, in one file. Massimiliano Minocri
The Constitutional Court has issued a new warning to the Catalan Parliament to prevent it from processing proposals that constitute an “infringement of the constitutional and legal order”, dismissing the appeal tabled by 32 MPs from the Ciutadans faction in the chamber upheld against Amparo. The reason for the appeal was the decision of the Parliamentary Bureau, adopted in October 2019, which consisted in allowing the proposed resolution formulated by the groups ERC and Junts per to be processed “in response to the Supreme Court ruling on the events of 1 October”. Catalonia and the constituent parliamentary subgroup CUP-Crida. The initiative campaigned for the right to self-determination. The verdict did not find unanimous support as Progressive Sector Judge Ramón Sáez believed that the right violated was that of pro-independence groups, who were prevented from defending their initiative against the condemnation of pro-independence leaders.
The verdict, for which the conservative judge César Tolosa was the rapporteur, assumes that with this resolution the Executive Board of the Catalan Parliament has again “broken against the constitutional and legal order”. The court mentions that the Bureau also accepted the amendments tabled by the proposing groups. And it believes that in both decisions the Chamber’s governing body was aware that “it failed in its constitutional duty to comply with the decisions of this court, i.e. that there were decisions of this court that impeded their implementation prevented.”
Ciudadanos, in turn, contended that by allowing the proposed debate, their right to hold representative office under the conditions of equality – laid down in Article 23.2 of the Constitution – regarding the right of citizens to participate in public affairs had been violated according to their representatives the first section of the same provision. Cs claimed that the proposals to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision on the case also contradicted several previous rulings made by the Constitutional Court. Therefore, they added, as parliamentarians they are in a position not to participate in the debate on these proposals and thus relinquish their functions, or to attend the session despite knowing that it is illegal.
The judgment assumes that the Bureau of Parliament should have effectively prevented debate on the proposed resolutions and that by doing so it damaged the core of the representative function (ius in oficium) of the complaining MPs. In summary, the court argues that there has thus been a violation of their fundamental rights, which is decisive for the amount of the action brought and the nullity of the legal acts expressly challenged.
Judge Ramón Sáez voted against the verdict, who considers that the Constitutional Court unduly expands the content of the fundamental right to the exercise of the representative function of the plaintiff deputies, to which it only compels them by allowing them to work on the proposals of other groups in the debate intervention. Sáez adds that with this ruling, the Guarantee Board is sacrificing the fundamental right of the nominating MPs, preventing them from submitting their initiatives for deliberation and defending them in the chamber. The judge believes that the ruling “represents an unacceptable protection of parliamentary function by excluding relevant issues such as the form of government, criticism of the actions of the head of state and the issue of sovereignty from the political debate, which seriously undermines the principle.” democratically”.
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