Toni Comín lands in Madrid to collect the MEP certificate nine years after leaving for exile

MadridAfter almost nine years in exile and the day after the reappearance and return of Lluís Puig to Terrassa, Toni Comín will set foot in the Spanish state again to collect the European Parliament deputy credential that the Central Electoral Board (JEC) denied him in July 2024. He will do so now that Judge Pablo Llarena has lifted the arrest warrant that was against him and three days before solemnizing his return from exile by crossing the border on foot accompanied by his friends. “My exile does not end because I go to Madrid. [...] In the same way that when I have done some type of activity in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, or Berlin, it never crossed anyone's mind that my exile had ended,” he made clear on Tuesday from Brussels. “Madrid is a capital of a European state, it is not the capital of my country,” he added.

What he will have to do before the JEC is to swear to the Constitution –he will do it by “legal imperative”– in order to be an MEP for all purposes: “They have invented a procedure that makes no sense,” the Junts parliamentarian denounced two days ago, adding that he gives “no significance” to this act. After that, the European Parliament will proceed with “all speed” so that he can begin to serve and participate in the plenary session scheduled for November 11 and 12 in Brussels. Mind you, he will maintain his residence in Leuven (Belgium) because his work in the European Parliament will force him to live with one foot in Brussels and one foot in Catalonia.

Before the JEC appointment, he himself announced his wish to return to the Principality this weekend with his friends. However, the JEC anticipated this and summoned him for this Thursday. Even so, he did not want to change his plans so as not to enter a “loop of appeals” that would “delay” his ability to start acting as an MEP. He has also opted not to make a joint return with Carles Puigdemont –who remains in Waterloo and is not expected to return until after the November 29 elections– and with Lluís Puig –who will attend the Parliament plenary session this afternoon– because he had a “certain urgency” to join the parliamentary activity in Brussels: “We have sacrificed the personal desire to return together for political criteria that must be prioritized,” he justified.

Why is he not an MEP?

In the European elections of June 2024, Toni Comín secured 430,000 votes and became the only elected MEP for Junts, after losing half of the votes from 2019, with Carles Puigdemont as the head of the list. The Junts members finished only behind the PSC. However, Toni Comín has not been able to serve as an MEP because the JEC decided not to issue him the parliamentary credential with the justification that he did not appear to swear the Constitution at Congress, even though the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the Oriol Junqueras case does not establish this as a requirement.

As a result, the European Parliament left his seat vacant until there was a new ruling from the CJEU confirming that swearing to the Constitution is not an essential step to be recognized as an MEP. But that has not arrived. And now it will no longer be necessary. The community chamber, which refers to the CJEU ruling that recognized that Oriol Junqueras should have enjoyed immunity in 2019 to go to Madrid and swear to the Constitution, understood that Toni Comín could also travel to Spain without being arrested. However, neither he nor Carles Puigdemont have taken that step to avoid risking arrest.