The PP, Vox and Ciudadanos use debates on Venezuela and ETA to charge against the Government in Brussels
Spanish MEPs, Venezuela and ETA. The debates of Venezuela in the European Parliament, over which the European Union does not have any competence, are recurrent at the initiative of the Popular Party, Vox and Ciudadanos. This Tuesday the Commission of Petitions of the European Parliament, chaired by the popular Dolors Montserrat, has agreed to ask the Government of Spain for explanations for the meeting last January between the Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, and the Venezuelan Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, in Barajas airport. Rodríguez is on the list of people sanctioned by the EU, which would prevent him from entering Spain. The controversy even caused a plenary session in the European Parliament in which the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, intervened. And so much then, as this Tuesday, the European Commission has repeated what it has said so many times: it is the Member States that have to interpret whether or not they are correctly applying the sanctions approved by the Council of the EU - the 27 governments.
PP, Cs and Vox park a European Parliament mission on the deterioration of the Mar Menor to send another to Euskadi to investigate ETA crimes
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The petition has been submitted by Soranib Hernández de Deffendini, associate professor of International Law at the Rey Juan Carlos University. And it has been supported by PP, Vox and Ciudadanos.
"The fact that the Government of Spain has not adopted the necessary measures to comply with the CFSP decision [de política exterior y de seguridad común relativa a sanciones], which prevents the entry of sanctioned persons into its territory, is serious. But the fact that such action has not received any response from the European Union is even more so ", said the PP MEP Leopoldo López Gil (EPP):" The EU should not relax one iota its position against human rights violators, and we must remember that Delcy Rodríguez is a collaborator of the dictator Maduro, whose regime is the perpetrator of crimes against Humanity, as the United Nations has documented, and that is why it is sanctioned. "
"I am going to tell the S&D lady what has been accredited," said the Citizens MEP Jordi Cañas (Renew Europe) to the Socialist MEP Cristina Maestre: "That the Government of Spain allowed the decision of the Union to be violated European preventing [sic] to certain members of the dictatorial government of Venezuela who stepped on the Schengen territory. "
The Citizens MEP has defended giving effect to the petition on Venezuela: “This is politics and whoever doesn't like it has a problem with democracy. Some parties try to avoid responsibilities of the member states that are obvious. "
The Committee on Petitions will also write to the European Commission, which is, as Montserrat said, "competent to ensure compliance with EU law, so that it collects all available information to find out what He passed". However, the European Commission has always stated, including this Tuesday, that the competence of this matter lies with the Member States.
The socialist MEP Cristina Maestre, "the lady of the S&D" for Jordi Cañas, has criticized that the Petitions committee reproduces "a debate that was already carried out in the plenary session of the European Parliament in February, where the High Representative of Action Outside the European Union, Mr. Josep Borrell, has already clearly explained what were the margins of competence that the European Union has in this matter ".
"This must be explained to also make public our discomfort over the use and instrumentalization that is being made of the Petitions Committee to introduce matters in which there is no European competence with the sole objective of attacking the Government of Spain", said Maestre ".
"We are before the confirmation of some special relations of complicity between the Spanish government and a criminal regime that kills its population, which has expelled, driven to misery and wire six million Venezuelans, sending them outside its borders and who have terrorized arrest between arrests, torture, shortages and hunger, "said Vox MEP Hermann Tertsch (ECR).
In addition to requesting explanations from the Government of Spain for the January meeting between Ábalos and the vice president of Venezuela, the European Parliament commission chaired by Dolors Montserrat has also kept the petition open - unanimously - to investigate the 379 unsolved ETA crimes submitted , among others, by Daniel Portero, Madrid regional deputy of the PP and son of the prosecutor Luis Portero assassinated by ETA in Granada in 2000.
In his presentation, Portero has charged against those who in January did not vote for this petition, "and voted in favor of dead fish instead of murdered human beings", alluding to the PSOE and United We Can, who asked to investigate the state of the waters from the Mar Menor.
Thus began the petition, presented by the regional deputy of the PP, which followed with the other petitioner, the lawyer Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Arias, who dedicated himself to charge against France for not extraditing Josu Ternera, a matter on which nothing can be done nor the The European Parliament and the European Commission, as the green MEP Tatjana Ždanoka reminded him: "That colleagues refrain from misusing the petition between Spain and France." Something that the PP MEP José Ignacio Zoido replied: "He asks us not to speak. It is the politicians who have to say whether we are with the victims or with the murderers. There are no equidistance. We want clarity, honor the victims. The PP is there to vindicate the memory of the victims of terrorism ".
In this thesis of the equidistance advanced by Portero and abounded by Zoido, the Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé has stated: "In January the PSOE voted against the European Parliament collaborating in the clarification of ETA's crimes, it sided of impunity and murderers. ETA's heirs are sitting in the institutions and the Pedro Sánchez government negotiates with them. We cannot afford to look the other way. This European Parliament becomes an accomplice if we do not demand that justice be done. "
The socialist Maestre has expressed her "solidarity with victims": "We all have victims, all of Spain is a victim of terrorism. All our solidarity with those who were murdered. That does not mean that we disagree in this case. Listening to Portero who is a deputy in the Madrid Assembly, it strikes me that you intend to usurp the groups' freedom of vote. I imagine you will meet the minister [Rafael] Catalá, who responded to these requests in the past by saying that he trusted the Spanish justice system. We trust his word and all governments, and the police and the Civil Guard. Josu Ternera is a murderer, it will be necessary to respect the channels and the procedures ".
Citizens MEP Maite Pagazaurtundua (UPyD / Renew Europe) stated: "I have been listening to the petitions for four years, agreeing with them. The words of the European Commission are not enough when it comes to democracy under attack. Hundreds of murderers on the loose, thousands We are talking about the fact that Josu Ternera has never been prosecuted for crimes against humanity. [quien tiene auto de procesamiento abierto] to make the legal account of 245 unsolved murders. It creates enormous frustration when a country denies an arrest warrant in such a case. We need justice and truth. There are still hate crimes against the victims. International attention with a mission is necessary to help. "
