CDC and ERC finalize roadmap for 27-S: Independence in 18 months

CDC and ERC signed a preliminary agreement this afternoon, with Omnium, ANC, and the Association of Municipalities for Independence, on a joint roadmap for the pro-sovereignty parties in the September 27 elections. The document, the result of understandings signed earlier, remains open to the addition of other groups with whom they are having conversations or who are debating participation internally, such as MES, Unió, and EUiA. The agreed text states that the parties that subscribe to it must make clear "as a primary and highlighted point" that "to vote for them is a pronouncement in favor of Catalan independence".

Once the plebiscitary character of the elections is established by the pro-independence lists, a term of 18 months will be set as the "maximum period" to proclaim "a new state or Catalan republic". The commitments undertaken in the roadmap are to a clear pronouncement in favor of independence, but also to "the recovery of the social state" and to "democratic regeneration". As to the development of the process, they say that if the forces in favor of independence obtain a sufficient majority, a Constitution will have to be written within a period of ten months "based in an open constitutional process". At the same time, "the necessary structures for a new state" will continue to be created and put into operation.

The core elements of the agreement are the "acts of sovereignty" to be done starting with the elections. Everything will start with an initial pro-sovereignty declaration as an "announcement and beginning of a process towards the proclamation of a new state". This will be a process which, unlike that of 9-N and the Catalan Statute, which were subject to challenges in the Constitutional Court, "will in no case be subject to existing laws or eventual challenges". The process, which should last 18 months starting from the elections, will involve negotiations on assets and liabilities with the Spanish state, negotiations for recognition of the Catalan state on the international stage, and maintenance of "an expectant attitude with respect to the alternative of a binding referendum " on independence.

The end of the process will involve the approval of a Constitution immediately prior to a "declaration of independence", and, based on the new framework, the choosing of a new Parliament and the negotiation of new ways of relating between the State and the EU.