Tajani justifies the disavowal for the "tensions" linked to the
trial and the occupations of the headquarters of the community institutions in
Barcelona two weeks ago
The president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, decided this Friday to prevent, for reasons of "public
order", the lecture that on Monday was to be delivered by former President
Carles Puigdemont on the trial of the procés.
The European Parliament justified the veto in the occupations of the
headquarters of the EU institutions in Barcelona by activists of the Catalan National Assembly on the 1st of February and "the tensions" derived from the trial.
Puigdemont kept the door open to lead the European lists to bring the
"right to self-determination" to Parliament.
Puigdemont had been invited by the Flemish
nationalist MEP Ralph Packet and the Slovenian MEP Ivo Vajgl to the European
Parliament to give a lecture under the title Catalonia and the trial of the referendum: a challenge for the European
Union. There were already a date and a time scheduled: next Monday at
18.30. And in the lecture he was going to be flanked by the president of the
Generalitat, Quim Torra. However, the PP MEP Esteban González Pons, the PSOE
MEP Iratxe García and the Citizens MEP Javier Nart sent a letter to Tajani
asking him to cancel the event.
These MEPs had demanded to veto
what would have been the first visit of Puigdemont to the European Parliament
since he escaped to Belgium, on the grounds that the Parliament cannot
"welcome someone who is evaded from Spanish justice and has flaunted his
repeated disobedience to rulings and warnings from the Constitutional Court”.
After consulting with the Security Directorate of
the European Parliament, Tajani decided to prevent the lecture. After carrying
out an evaluation, according to the statement issued by the Parliament, it was
concluded that there was a "high risk" that the event could threaten
"the maintenance of public order", without its security services being
able to "mitigate" the risk.
In that analysis, according to the statement, not
only have been taken into account the "tensions" related to the trial
of the procés, but also "the recent
occupation" of the venues in Barcelona of the EU Parliament and
European Commision by demostrators of the Catalan National Assembly. It has also been taken into account, it adds, the
"lack of information about the participants in the event" and,
especially, the "possibility of incidents inside or around" the premises.
Puigdemont, who attended the Brussels Book Fair in
the afternoon, accused Tajani of letting himself be "dragged" by a
"demophobic drift" since he considered it "utterly false"
that the lecture would jeopardize Parliament's security. "I regret that
the European Parliament has surrendered to the pressures of the tripartite of
the 155, and that instead of reinforcing its role as a temple of speech (...) it
censors the voice of those who represent Catalan institutions, such as
President Torra", he complained.
May Elections
Puigdemont reopened the door to stand as a
candidate for the elections to the European Parliament next May. Tajani's
decision, he said, "is a compelling argument". "When they try to
silence and marginalize you and deny the evidence of the persistent reality
that they do not like, we have to find ways to break it up in the middle of the
plenary session of the Parliament or the European institutions", said the
former president. In his opinion, in the next legislature the independence
parties must put on the EU's agenda "the right to self-determination and
the freedom of peoples".
Both the PP and Citizens celebrated the decision of
Tajani. The PP spokesman in the European Parliament, Esteban González Pons,
said through his Twitter account that he had acted with
"responsibility" to "suspend the act of the perpetrator of the
coup and escaped Puigdemont".
"After the pro-independence activists took the
seat of the European institutions 15 days ago in Barcelona, they had to avoid
repeating the aggression," added the PP spokesman. The leader of Citizens
in Catalonia, Inés Arrimadas, affirmed that "making propaganda of the
division" attacks "the foundational values of the EU”.
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