The PP focuses its expectations against the amnesty on the Venice Commission

The parliamentary processing of the amnesty law is advancing without the PP being able to do anything to prevent it, although the popular ones are striving to make the path of the law as tortuous as possible. The strategy is to fight every step of the PSOE bill in the Congress and the Senate and, in parallel, try to elevate the debate to the European institutions. This last movement is the one that is resisting them the most. At the moment, after many efforts by the party to Europeanize the debate, its main expectations are placed on the Venice Commission, a body dependent on the Council of Europe that is consultative and non-executive in nature. A delegation from this commission will travel to Madrid next Thursday and Friday to study the law at the request of the Senate, dominated by the PP, although its members will meet with all the parties and jurists of different stripes and will prepare a non-binding report.

The popular people now doubt that it will be possible to call the Commissioner of Justice, Didier Reynders, to appear in the Upper House, as they had planned, because he now has a mediation task between the Government and the PP in the renewal of the Council of the Judiciary and because he will have to resign from his position soon since he has run for the general secretary of the Council of Europe.

Last December, the Venice Commission accepted the request of the Senate, controlled by the absolute majority of the PP, to analyze the amnesty law. This Tuesday, the Board of the Upper House announced that the delegation will meet between this Thursday and this Friday with members of the parliamentary groups to analyze both the bill and the latest movements of the Government regarding the measure of grace for those accused of he processes, as explained by the vice president of the governing body of the Chamber, the popular Javier Maroto. “His task is not to study whether the amnesty law is constitutional or not,” Maroto warned, but rather whether the “separation of powers” ​​is complied with in Spain.

The Senate Bureau has delivered both the bill and the live amendments translated into English to the Commission, as well as related statements. Among them, those of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in which he opens himself to limiting the instruction periods to convince Junts without touching the amnesty law, according to Maroto. “The debate about the separation of powers does not just revolve around the law. A lot has happened in the last few months,” he added.

The delegation will meet with representatives of political parties and also with legal “experts.” The first meeting will be on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. with the president of the Senate, Pedro Rollán, and with the new senior lawyer, Sara Mucientes. The spokesperson of the PP in Congress, Miguel Tellado, has accused the Executive and its partners of preventing the senior lawyer of Congress and author of the report that gave approval to process the amnesty law from meeting with the commission, when the Congressional table, where the left has a majority. The PSOE spokesperson, Patxi López, has defended for his part that the Congress Board has done what has always been done: have the Venice Commission meet with the branch commission, in this case the Justice Commission, as well as who in 2014 met with the Interior Ministry when analyzing the citizen security law.

The opinion will be ready in mid-March, since the Venice Commission has scheduled its plenary meeting for the 15th of that month. The admission for processing of this type of petitions by this community body is quite common. And it is also usually done quickly when it comes to evaluating a bill, so that the opinion arrives during the parliamentary process.

The PP places its expectations on the report of this advisory body while doubting whether it is now possible to involve the EU Justice Commissioner against the amnesty law. The party had planned to call Commissioner Reynders to appear in the Senate during the processing of the law, but different sources in the popular leadership admit that it is no longer so clear that this is possible. The problem is that Reynders is mediating between the Government and the PP to seek an agreement to renew the Council of the Judiciary, but also that he is expected to leave his position in March to campaign as he is running for the general secretary of the Council. of Europe and may not have time due to the delay in processing the law. Reynders was the largest piece of those appearing that the PP expected during the processing of the norm in the Senate.

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