The CJEU agrees with the European Parliament in its decision to declare the Junqueras seat vacant

BRUSSELS, 22 (EUROPA PRESS) - The Court of Justice of the European Union has dismissed this Thursday the appeal filed by the defense of the ERC leader and former vice president of the Generalitat, Oriol Junqueras, against the decision of the then president of the European Parliament , the Italian socialist David Sassoli, to declare his seat as an MEP vacant.

The European Justice thus endorses the first decision of the General Court of the EU that already considered inadmissible a first appeal by Junqueras in December 2020, concluding that Sassoli did nothing more than transmit to the rest of the European Parliament information about a pre-existing legal situation, derived exclusively of the decisions of the Spanish authorities.

In addition, the sentence reiterates that the electoral procedure continues to be governed by national law, not only with regard to voting rules and attribution of mandates, but also with regard to the eligibility of the members of the Eurochamber.

Junqueras was elected MEP in the May 2019 European Parliament elections, but, failing to obtain permission to swear or promise to abide by the Spanish Constitution as required by national law, his seat was declared vacant by the Central Electoral Board.

In the plenary session of January 2020, the president of the European Parliament informed the rest of the Chamber of the election of Junqueras as a MEP for the purposes of July 2, 2019 but also that his seat was vacant as of January 3, 2020, as a consequence of the fact that the Supreme Court considered that the independence leader did not enjoy parliamentary immunity under national law and therefore it was not appropriate to authorize his displacement or grant his release.

In this context, the Luxembourg-based Court reasons that the General Court did not make an error in considering national law as the legal basis for the decision of the European Parliament of January 13, 2020 and clarifies that the expiration of the mandate of European deputy as consequence of a criminal conviction in Spain constitutes a case of "annulment of mandate" and not an "incompatibility", since it does not result from a breach of the prohibition to accumulate certain functions.

Regarding the margin of appreciation available to the European Parliament on the consequences of an annulment of mandate that has its origin in national law, the CJEU insists that the European institution will simply be informed by the national authorities of the expiration of the mandate in application of that Law.

For this reason, the sentence explains, the electoral procedure continues to be governed by national law and stresses that, contrary to Junqueras's arguments, this procedure does not only refer to the rules for voting and attribution of mandates, but also to the rules relating to the eligibility of members of Parliament.

From this it can be deduced that the ineligibility that gave rise to the annulment of the mandate of the ERC leader in application of the Spanish electoral law is part of the "electoral procedure" governed by national law, respect for which it is not up to Parliament to control.

Finally, regarding the challenge of the legal grounds by which the General Court declared the first appeal inadmissible, the European High Court considers that Junqueras's argument is inadmissible and must be dismissed as ineffective because it does not allow one to question the conclusion of the first instance according to which the appeal filed to obtain the annulment of the denial of the request of December 20, 2019 was directed against a non-existent act.