The Council of Europe has also been, at the election of the PP, one of the background scenarios of the political fray around the amnesty law, the most controversial norm so far in the 15th legislature, a norm marked by a complicated procedure. which, pending the Senate, this Thursday obtained the approval of Congress after a long and agonizing negotiation between the PSOE and the Catalan independence parties. The Venice Commission, a consultative and non-executive body, dependent on the European institution outside the European Union, has concluded its final opinion, which was made known this Friday after a draft was disseminated in early March.
Then and now, the socialists have interpreted the non-binding opinion of the organization as an endorsement of the grace measure and the popular ones, as a blow to the Government. With the ruling, one of the strategies of internationalization of the controversy undertaken by the popular ones comes to an end, who in addition to turning to the Venice Commission, have urged the European Commission to speak out, but it will wait to do so until The law is finally approved after processing in the Senate and its foreseeable return and approval in Congress. Furthermore, the Popular Party, with the support of Vox and Ciudadanos, called for a European Parliament debate last November.
The Venice Commission points out that the bill “has deepened a deep and virulent division” in various sectors, but does not violate the separation of powers, as long as the application of “the general criteria of the law is left in the hands of the judges.” ” to “specific cases”, and furthermore, although he recommends that it should have been approved by a qualified majority – greater support than the absolute majority – he does not consider a constitutional reform necessary, as the popular ones understood.
These are the main milestones of the report, with the prelude to the presentation of the PSOE four months ago of its non-law proposal.
November 13, 2023. The bill is presented. With the Government still in office, the PSOE registered in Congress alone, without the signatures of its investiture partners, the amnesty law proposal, one of the demands of the two Catalan independence parties present in Congress. It is requested and achieved that it be processed through the emergency procedure, which the popular ones opposed. In the Senate, where the rule will have to pass, the PP used its absolute majority to change the regulations and for the text to follow the ordinary procedure.
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December 8th. The president of the Parliamentary Assembly asks about amnesties. The then president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Tiny Kox, asked the Venice Commission for a study on the rule of law requirements that an amnesty should meet. He asked—in general, not specifically about the Spanish norm—about the consequences of eliminating criminal responsibility of the authors of the processabout whether amnesty could be granted for crimes of terrorism if a final sentence had not yet been handed down, about whether embezzlement and corruption fell under the umbrella of the pardon measure, if the rule prevented the judges from acting and if their summons to appear before parliamentary committees endangered the independence of the Judiciary and the separation of powers.
December 13th. The Senate asks the Commission to evaluate the norm. One day after Congress approved the bill, the president of the Senate, the popular Pedro Rollán, representing the Senate Board, in which the PP has an absolute majority, asked the Venice Commission to speak urgently on the PSOE bill. The popular ones disgraced that it had been launched “at the expense of parliamentary consensus” and that, in addition, it aroused “rejection” in society and in the legal world. Others, also from the Upper House, joined the Senate’s request to ask the General Council of the Judiciary and the Fiscal Council for their opinions.
December 15 and 16. The order is accepted. The advisory body of the Council of Europe accepted the request of the Upper House at its meeting on December 15 and 16. Also within this period, he committed to preparing another report based on the questions of the president of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. The organization gave itself a maximum deadline for that opinion coinciding with the plenary session this March, which will be held this Friday and tomorrow, Saturday.
December 22th. Five international rapporteurs elected. After pointing out that the report would be done urgently as requested by the Senate, the Venice Commission entrusted it to five rapporteurs: Marta Cartabia (former Minister of Justice of Italy), Philip Dimitrov (former Prime Minister of Bulgaria ), Regina Kiener (Professor of Constitutional Law in Switzerland), Martin Kuijer (Counselor in the Supreme Court of the Netherlands) and José Luis Vargas (Magistrate of the Electoral Tribunal of Mexico).
From February 7 to 9, 2024. The Commission visits Spain. The five rapporteurs of the report and the secretary of the Venice Commission, Simona Granata-Menghini, meet in Madrid with the representatives of the General Council of the Legal Profession; the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños; the Congressional Justice Commission; the General Council of the Judiciary; the president of the Senate and the representatives of the parliamentary groups in the upper house; the State Attorney General and the president of the Constitutional Court; academics and representatives of the Generalitat. The information collected did not end there, because they also received documents, in addition to the Ministry of Justice, from parties such as ERC, Junts, Sumar and Vox. By then, the norm has already suffered a major setback. On January 30, Congress said no to the law due to the opposition of Junts, which thus paralyzed the process after failing to obtain more transfers from the Government; The text returned to the Justice Commission for new negotiation.
March 1st. The draft of the opinion reaches the media. The draft of the provisional opinion in which the organization generically supported the possibility of an amnesty law like the one being processed in the Cortes, considering that “national unity and social and political reconciliation are legitimate objectives” of these measures of grace that occur in most countries, indicates the draft opinion of the legal body of the Council of Europe, while criticizing aspects of the norm and its processing, especially that it was processed urgently and that, Contrary to what is desirable for a pardon measure of that magnitude, it could have caused a “deep and virulent” division that the proposed pardon measure has created both among the political class and in other sectors of Spanish society. The president of the Senate, Pedro Rollán, complained that the text reached the media, which he attributed to a government leak.
March, 15th. The Commission concludes its final opinion. A week after the Congressional Justice Commission approved the amnesty after accepting the latest demands of Junts and a day after the norm was endorsed in the plenary session of the Lower House, this Friday the final changes to the opinion were known. , within the planned deadlines and in time for them to be included in the plenary session of the Venice Commission, which will be held on March 15 and 16, one of its four annual meetings. The advisory body supports the general objective of the search for reconciliation, pointing out that it is not required that the norm be adopted through a constitutional reform – although it specifies that it would have been desirable for it to be approved by a majority greater than the mere absolute majority. and points out that it does not violate the division of powers if the judges are responsible for applying it. It includes, as criticisms, that the law “has deepened” the division of Spanish society, and that in its final text it is extended by two months, it understands that without explanation, the time period of the events that will be exempted by the measure of grace , which is why it calls for “the scope of application to be restricted and more precisely defined.”
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