The CJEU calendar complicates Puigdemont's return in summer

MadridThe possibility of former president Carles Puigdemont returning to Catalonia in the summer is fading. The reason is that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has not yet communicated the date on which it will rule on the amnesty. The usual practice of this body is to give a month's notice, so that the Constitutional Court (TC) no longer expects a resolution on the preliminary questions regarding embezzlement before June. This European justice calendar complicates the prospects of the TC being able to resolve the Junts leader's appeal before the August holidays, as confirmed to ARA by various sources from the Constitutional Court.

Thus, if nothing changes, the TC considers the most likely scenario to be that its final decision on the application of the amnesty to Puigdemont will be from September onwards, as reported by El Periódico. If the CJEU also does not rule before the summer, a possibility that the same sources do not rule out, the former president's return could be further delayed. Given that in July only two plenary sessions are scheduled in the Constitutional Court – it is a time of year when there is an accumulation of matters to be closed before the holidays – and that the amnesty debate is expected to be internally contentious, the TC finds it difficult to resolve if the CJEU's ruling does not arrive until June. "In May it was already tight," points out one of the sources.

The path to applying the amnesty to Puigdemont has been marked by repeatedly postponed calendar forecasts. This occasion is one more, although the TC specifies that the time the CJEU is taking to rule is within the usual timeframe and cannot be considered a delay. The climate in the Constitutional Court is not one of urgency, because the priority now is that the decision they make has all the guarantees in the face of the resistance it may generate later in the Supreme Court, which is the one that will have to apply the amnesty to the former president, in case the decision of the CJEU and subsequently that of the TC are favorable to Puigdemont.

The judicial right

What is already taken for granted is that the conservative magistrates of the Constitutional Court, who are a minority, will oppose allowing Puigdemont's return to freedom. In fact, the person in charge of the first ruling on this matter is José María Macías, the battering ram against the amnesty who was previously on the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and is now on the Constitutional Court. Macías is the rapporteur for the appeal by Jordi Turull, secretary general of Junts and the first person convicted for October 1st who filed it with the TC. The most plausible scenario is that Macías will present a proposal for a resolution against the amnesty in a first plenary session and that, therefore, another one will have to be held because whoever replaces him as rapporteur presents an alternative, which would delay the proceedings.

However, not all delays are attributable to these factors. Puigdemont's defense's decision to disqualify Macías and two more conservative judges –Enrique Arnaldo and Concepción Espejel– already caused the TC to warn last October that this move would imply a delay. At that time, the decision on Puigdemont was placed after Christmas.

The pronouncements of the 'Procés'

That the "Proces" has been one of the Constitutional Court's headaches in recent years has become evident this Wednesday. In an address on the occasion of the visit of the President of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Mattias Guyomar, to the TC's headquarters in Madrid, the President of the Constitutional Court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, asserted that the ECHR has not reprimanded them. Conde-Pumpido cited Strasbourg's endorsement of two specific TC decisions. The one that endorsed that debates on self-determination or amnesty could be vetoed in the Parliament and the one that endorsed the pre-trial detention of the pro-independence leaders. "Spain can be considered with reasonable pride as one of the countries with one of the most solid and consistent human rights guarantee systems," he asserted.