The jurisdiction ruled at the request of the Spanish justice, which aims at the Catalan independence leaders, including the ex-Catalan president Carles Puigdemont.
by Sandrine Morel (Madrid, correspondent )
Las to see Belgian justice reject the European arrest warrants he issued, the judge of the Spanish Supreme Court Pablo Llarena had asked a series of questions preliminary to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) In March 2021. He wanted her to explain the reasons which may justify that the judges of a Member State – in his case, Belgium – refuse to apply European arrest warrants issued by another, in this case Spain.
The objective was then to reactivate, with more success, its arrest warrants targeting the Catalan independence leaders who fled to Belgium after the attempted secession of October 2017, in the forefront of which the former president of the government Regional of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, still exiled in Belgium.
The CJEU responded to him on Tuesday January 31. Complex, detailed but not always easy to decipher, its stop has bizarrely content everyone in Spain. Both the separatists, who shouted Victoire, as well as the “Unionists”, who saw it as a high limitation of possible extradition refusals. 2> “satisfaction” of Spain
It emerges from the CJEU decision that European mandates rejections between member states must have “an exceptional character”. And that, if, ultimately, they pronounce them, the judges must have previously demonstrated, in a documented, precise and concrete manner, “systemic or generalized failures affecting the jurisdictional system of [the] Member State [from which he emanates]”. They must also argue “a manifest defect in jurisdiction of the jurisdiction called to judge the person sought in the said Member State”.
The acting president of the Spanish Supreme Court, Francisco Marin Castan, expressed his “satisfaction” for what he considers “support” to the position of the Spanish judge. In 2021, the arrest warrant that Mr. Llarena had issued against the former Catalan Minister of Culture, Lluis Puig, prosecuted for “embezzlement and disobedience”, had been refused on the grounds that the Supreme Court was not ‘Judicial body competent to judge him – unlike the Catalan courts – and that Mr. Puig was likely not to see guaranteed in Spain the respect of his fundamental rights.
For the parties of the Spanish right, the judgment of the CJEU validates the arguments of Mr. Llarena, and, for the spokesperson for the left government, Isabel Rodriguez, he could “facilitate” the delivery of Mr. Puigdemont to Spain.
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