Spain’s Constitutional Court won’t take action against Forcadell before ruling on its own reform
The Spanish Constitutional Court is pondering over the law that would allow it to impeach Carme Forcadell, the Speaker of the Catalan Parliament
Despite the Spanish government’s request, for now Spain’s Constitutional Court (TC) is not expected to press charges against Carme Forcadell for disobeying its rulings, which might lead to a precautionary penalty or even criminal charges.
As a matter of fact, the TC does not intend to take immediate action regarding the other instance of disobedience to its rulings by Catalan institutions currently being considered: the Catalan government’s foreign service. The TC won’t make a move until it has dealt with the appeal against the law that reformed it, granting it additional powers to handle such incidents. Speaking for Spain’s news agency EFE, three different sources from within the TC confirmed that much.
There are two reasons that explain the court’s stance. Firstly, both incidents concerning Catalan institutions fall under the amended law that governs the Constitutional Court, which is being appealed. Should the TC go ahead and take action anyway, it would constitute a de facto endorsement of the amendment, one which the TC itself finds dubiously constitutional. The second reason is prudence: the judges do not wish to strain the political climate in Catalonia any further, especially at such a sensitive time.
So far the Spanish government has lodged two complaints following a failure to comply with TC rulings. One was prompted by the Catalan parliament passing resolution to initiate the political process towards independence. The other was in response to the Catalan government ignoring the cautionary suspension issued by the TC on Catalonia’s Foreign Service law.
In July this year, EFE’s same sources had already indicated that some within the TC harboured doubts about the legislation amended by Rajoy’s government at the end of 2015, which aimed to enforce compliance with all TC rulings and injunctions.
Should the TC decide to proceed with the two incidents, it would actually be endorsing the amendment to its own legislation, which in turn has been appealed before the very same court by —among others— the Catalan government.
The situation in Catalonia demands a great deal of prudence from the Constitutional Court, at least in the coming months. This means that its members are unlikely to take any executive action on either incident and, instead, will sit on the fence for some time before ruling on the legislative reform of their own institution.
