After an intense month of negotiations, PSOE, ERC and Junts have closed the agreement on the amnesty law that consolidates the legislature and opens the door to the Budgets. The three groups announced this Wednesday an agreement for an amendment that will once again modify the rule that is being voted on this Thursday in the Congressional Justice Commission. It will be the third version of the proposal registered by the PSOE last November. Although the joint statement released at eight in the afternoon does not detail the legal formula chosen for the agreed transactional amendment, negotiating sources indicate that the agreement refers to European regulations on terrorism, that is, it will exclude crimes classified by the directive. European Convention of 2017 and condition them with respect to the European Convention on Human Rights. The text is similar to the latest Junts proposal, but without references to the Penal Code.
Hours before the announcement, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in an informal conversation with the journalists who accompanied him on the official plane on a trip to Brazil and Chile, was very clear when talking about the negotiations with Junts and ERC for the law. of amnesty. Sánchez has pointed out that the pact is based on a change in the law to give “more guarantees” to the independentists, and especially to the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont – whom the Supreme Court has decided to investigate for terrorism – that the rule will include all actions related to the process and all the independentists involved in it, also the former Catalan president. Sánchez has insisted that the law, with the new modifications, will continue to be absolutely constitutional.
The key is in the possible changes in the crime of terrorism. Later, in a joint appearance with Luiz Inázio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, Sánchez implicitly admitted that there will be changes in this delicate section. “We are going to reach an agreement to pass an important law for Spanish democracy, which wants to leave behind all the judicial consequences of the worst political crisis we have experienced in 45 years,” he assured. “The Venice Commission itself says that an amnesty law, which in Europe existed in 54 countries, serves for reconciliation. Reconciliation between Catalans who clashed and with brothers who live in other territories of Spain. In any case, the law came in constitutional and aligned with European law and will come out constitutional and aligned with European law,” he concluded.
This same idea of alignment with European law, but going a little further, was what Junts sources used to express their satisfaction with the agreement and thus pointing to the change in the way in which the crime of terrorism is amnesty. “The text includes the crimes of terrorism and treason adapted to European standards and not to the Spanish Penal Code. It also includes the main recommendations of the Venice Commission, also in the crime of embezzlement,” say the independentistas. Junts and ERC have complained that Spanish judges make an excessive interpretation of the 2015 reform of the Penal Code, agreed by the PSOE and the PP, which modified the part of street terrorism to the point of making it considered terrorism as something that the majority of European legislation would be public disorder. This seems to be one of the axes of the agreement. “Judges who do not want to apply this law will have to prevaricate,” Junts sources conclude.
Sánchez, on the contrary, explained that he never had “any doubt” that the previous wording already allowed amnesty to all the independentists involved in the process, including Puigdemont and Marta Rovira, general secretary of ERC, investigated in the Caso Tsunami. ERC and all other allies of the PSOE had also accepted that this last wording included everyone. But since Junts had doubts, the PSOE, according to Sánchez, has agreed to expand these guarantees, ensuring that the changes do not make the law exceed the limit of constitutionality and does not risk being overturned by the European courts. “It will be changed to give more guarantees, to further expand those parameters. I have never had any doubt that they were all included, but if we have to reinforce the guarantees, we do so. “Everyone will be amnestied, all assumptions will be covered,” the president insisted.
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The head of the Government is thus admitting that the socialists have accepted changes so that Puigdemont, who decided to overthrow the law on January 30 and prolong the negotiation – something that weakened the Executive – can be sure that despite the Supreme Court’s attempt to implicate him for terrorism, the amnesty will also include him. The PSOE has insisted these weeks that its red line was not to include any type of terrorism in the amnesty, something that they believe would lead to European justice overturning the law. But it seems evident that a formula has been found that can satisfy Junts and give it guarantees that Puigdemont, on the run from Spanish justice in Belgium, will not be imprisoned as soon as he returns to Spain. Now we need to know the details of that negotiation that has been carried out with great secrecy between the three groups – PSOE, Junts and ERC – that have been most involved in this regulation.
Sánchez maintains that with the approval of the law, the majority will demonstrate its solidity and will open the door to the approval of new Budgets that would consolidate the legislature. The Government is experiencing a moment of extreme difficulty after the outbreak of the Koldo case, the first relevant corruption scandal within the Executive since Pedro Sánchez arrived at La Moncloa in 2018. With the new text of the amnesty, which is expected to be approved this Thursday in the Justice Commission for subsequent submission to the plenary session of Congress, and the Budgets, which would arrive in a few weeks, would clear up doubts about the Government’s resistance. Some doubts raised by the opposition when the new legislature has just completed 100 days. Based on the conversation with journalists, Sánchez is committed to approving the 2025 and 2024 Budgets, despite the fact that the months pass with the 2023 Budgets extended. “If we can approve those of 2024, we are not going to wait for those of 2025,” the president summarized.
The vice president of the Government, Laura Vilagrà, appeared this Wednesday “satisfied” with the “good news” of the unblocking of the amnesty law, after the PSOE, JxCat and ERC have been able to “get on track” an agreement that could be announced “ in the next few hours.” This is what she has stated in statements to Catalunya Ràdio, after the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has shown himself open to accepting changes in the amnesty law, to give even more guarantees in the face of Junts’ doubts. Like Sánchez, Vilagrà has also highlighted that the text of the law already offered sufficient “guarantees” to those prosecuted by the process, Although, if it is possible to “reinforce some aspects, it is welcome.”
The leader of the PSOE does not underestimate the importance of the impact of Koldo case, although he insists that it is just one case and not systemic corruption like the one that, he maintains, the PP had. And he affirms that he has acted forcefully. But, above all, the president maintains that the groups that support the Government remain willing to do so, and to approve the Budgets, therefore, the legislature is not at risk even though this is a difficult moment.
“All the groups that support us have shown their willingness to give stability to the Government. The important thing now is to achieve that pact with ERC and Junts, who also want the amnesty law to be approved,” Sánchez insists. The president, therefore, believes that he is on his way to consolidating the majority and the legislature and moving forward to the end. And he is convinced that this is what most exasperates the opposition and leads to a “campaign of intoxication and hoaxes” that exaggerate the extremes of a corruption case that he considers is being decisively stopped.
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