ECHR Upholds Veto on Catalan Independence Debates
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. X/ @GTsulaiaq
February 27, 2025 Hour: 9:34 am
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Spanish Constitutional Court’s decisions were legal.
On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) deemed inadmissible the appeals filed against Spain by two members of the Bureau of the Catalan Parliament over the case brought against them for disobeying the Constitutional Court by allowing the processing of pro-independence resolutions in 2019.
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The ECHR judges ruled that the Spanish Constitutional Court’s decisions, which prevented the Bureau of the Catalan Parliament from processing these sovereignty resolutions, “were legal, foreseeable, and not disproportionate.”
Their ruling also recalls that “the Spanish Constitution cannot be modified by any means other than those provided for by law, which was precisely the objective of the Catalan Parliament.”
The appellants were two members of the Bureau at that time, Josep Costa i Rossello and Eusebi Campdepadros i Pucurull, who served as vice president and secretary of the institution, respectively. They were joined by 30 other individuals who were then regional legislators.
In their appeals, they defended the Catalan Parliament’s right to debate independence, invoking the European Convention on Human Rights and its articles on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association.
However, after reviewing the case, the seven ECHR judges unanimously ruled that the Constitutional Court’s decisions had “a legitimate objective, namely, the protection of constitutional order.”
The ruling also notes that the Spanish Constitutional Court considers that resolutions on Catalan independence could be debated in the Spanish Parliament (Cortes Generales).
For this reason, the Strasbourg Court determined that the Constitutional Court “exercised, under extreme conditions, its power to enforce its previous rulings aimed at protecting the Constitution in its role as the guarantor of the territorial integrity of the State.”
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
