Carles Puigdemont, the former leader of Catalonia, faces a moment of truth as the European Parliament prepares to vote on whether or not to lift his parliamentary immunity.

If the plenary adopts a waiver to strip the politician of his special protection, the Spanish authorities will move to reactivate a European Arrest Warrant (EAS) to bring him back to the country and put him on trial. The extradition will have to be decided first by the Belgian justice system.

In Spain, Puigdemont stands accused of sedition and misuse of public funds. Similar charges have been filed against another two separatists, Antoni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, who also risk losing their immunity.

Regardless of the outcome, the three will retain their status as Members of the European Parliament for the time being.

The vote, which takes place Monday evening, will centre on the report written by Bulgarian MEP Angel Dzhambazki, who belongs to the eurosceptic group European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). Official results are expected Tuesday morning.

The report was approved last month by the parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI). The committee concluded the events involving the three MEPs took place before they entered the European Parliament and the accusations are not related to their activities as European legislators. Therefore, they noted, immunity from prosecution does not apply to their case.

Fifteen MEPs of the committee voted in favour of lifting immunity, with eight opposing and two abstaining.

While that vote was secret, the numbers indicate that a simple majority against Piedmont will be likely replicated in the hemicycle.

The three main parties (EPP, S&D and Renew Europe) of the European Parliament, which together hold more than half the seats, have long opposed the protection afforded to the Catalan politicians.

However, these parties are large and diverse, and differences of opinion are expected to happen. Spanish MEP Izaskun Bilbao, who seats with the liberal Renew Europe, has already said she will vote against the waiver. “Political problems are not resolved through sentences but with dialogue and politics,” she wrote on Twitter.

The aforementioned ECR group, which includes MEPs from the Spanish far-right party Vox, is also poised to vote in favour of lifting the immunity, although the Flemish separatist N-VA, a close ally of Puigdemont, is certain to break the party’s discipline.

The Greens and The Left are widely expected to move against the waiver. The Greens/EFA group accommodates MEPs from Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ECR), another Catalan pro-independence party.

Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí are non-attached MEPs, a condition that has worked to their disadvantage during the whole legal process.

With these challenging numbers in mind, the trio has been carrying out a PR campaign to convince their fellow parliamentarians to vote in their favour in order to maintain their immunity or, at least, to make the result as tight as possible.

Brussels has been a favourite stage for the Catalan independence movement, which has used the capital to raise the international profile of their political crusade.

“We’re going to fight this battle until the last minute, whether it’s in the European Parliament or in the [European] Court of Luxembourg if we have to go there,” Puigdemont told Euronews last month, after the JURI committee’s vote.

What happens next?

Monday’s vote will close a chapter in the long battle that the three Catalan politicians have been waging in order to avoid extradition to Spain. But another phase will open.

If MEPs decide to lift their colleagues’ immunity, the trio will become liable to prosecution and trial. The vote will not equate to a guilty verdict since MEPs are not judging the background of the case.

The Spanish authorities have been waiting for the plenary’s vote to know if they can reactivate the European Search Warrant placed over Puigdemont for sedition and misuse of public funds during the 2017 illegal independence referendum in Catalonia and the unilateral declaration of independence. As the then-leader of the region, Puigdemont himself pronounced that declaration.

In Spain, nine Catalan pro-separatist leaders and activists have already been found guilty of sedition and given prison sentences of between 9 and 13 years. Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí were supposed to be part of that same trial, but their exile made it impossible.

The legal team of Puigdemont is putting its hopes on the precedent set by the case of Lluís Puig, another Catalan politician wanted in Spain.

In a surprising twist earlier this year, Belgium rejected the extradition of Puig arguing that the Spanish Supreme Court was not competent to judge him and there was a risk of not respecting his presumption of innocence.

Spanish judge Pablo Llarena, of the Supreme Court, disagreed with this decision. To avoid a similar outcome, Llarena has referred the matter to the EU Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling to determine whether the Belgian justice system is applying the warrant in the correct manner.

Llarena wants Luxembourg (the seat of the ECJ) to voice its opinion on Puigdemont before moving further with the arrest warrant.

The legal battle will be complex and take many months to resolve. If the Belgian justice system ends up denying Spain’s request, the three Catalan MEPs will be able to stay inside the country as MEPs – but without their special immunity.

Only a final judgment in Spain could take away their seats in the hemicycle.

Too little, too late for Mr. Orban

Too little, too late if you ask me.

To tolerate a disruptive behaviour for years and years, ignoring authoritarianism and right-wing excesses under some made-up Christian-conservatism, is the same as looking idly at extremism growing freely inside the very fabric of our leadership structure and in our societies.

And now that we have arrived here do we really think that Viktor Orban and Fidesz are in any way affected by the EPP’s decision to suspend his party? Or that they will suddenly be ashamed and change something in their political approach? Unfortunately, it is too late for that. We all know what’s going to happen from here.

Orban will intensify his rhetoric, and he will posture even more shamelessly as the self-styled last defender of Christianity.

In his own words sent to the EPP group, he is “attacked” in a moment when “hundreds of thousands of Europeans are hospitalised, and our doctors are saving lives” and the EPP decision is “undemocratic, unjust and unacceptable”.

Orban will continue to pump public money, national and European into his propaganda machine. He will continue to shout and put posters on motorways depicting himself as the defender of all Europe from immigrants, from the evil Soros, and from the incompetent politicians in Brussels, who spend their time tirelessly working out plans to harm the innocent people who voted for him.

Of course, he is the kind of leader with little regrets, and he will sacrifice anything and anybody, including his citizens, for his political gain.

Speaking of Soros, let’s ask him if he’s happy with supporting Orban in the early nineties. And more importantly, let’s ask ourselves if Hungary’s people deserve what’s coming to them. An isolated country ruled by an authoritarian leader who twists reality to match his particular interest. Orban is a political leader that will confuse the destiny of his country with his political survival.

The growing swell of anti-European strategists are working hard to find fractures in our political construction, and there is nothing more prominent and more explicit than Orban and Fidesz.

And the fact he was allowed to be part of EPP, throwing at him small and insignificant threats that he ignored repeatedly, was a real help for him to prosper and work on more fractures between us. He was the “bad boy,” the one who said it at it was, and because the costs were postponed continuously, he is now playing a martyr facing a wrongful conviction. Let’s face it! He used us and he used all the European crises to gain political advantage.

But it can be an excellent lesson for the future if we can understand the dangers behind [such] hesitation.

The price of this lesson is the future of democracy, nonetheless. We will continue to meet Orban at the European Council. His party is still in power and part of the European Parliament. He will seek alliances with the extremist forces from inside Europe and also abroad. It will be a nightmare.

But it’s a good reason to understand why we need a united Europe, without two speeds, with west and east, north and south, joining hands and sharing visions.

The too-much-delayed Conference on the Future of Europe is the opportune moment.

Maybe the design of its governance is not ideal. Still, we must go past that and focus on the content, use it to give voice to our citizens and pursue a union that emerges more resilient in the face of crisis, generates economic opportunity and growth, and is more prominent in this new multi-polar world.

The best joke on Orban is to turn him into an undercover agent of European integration.

_Dragoș Tudorache is a Romanian MEP. _

The coronavirus pandemic and ensuing economic and political turmoil have sharpened the challenges facing women as they demand equal rights, three of the world’s most influential female leaders warned Monday.

US Vice President Kamala Harris, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen addressed the European Parliament on International Women’s Day.

“Simply put, our world does not yet work for women as it should,” Harris, the first woman and the first American of African and Asian descent to serve as US vice-president, told MEPs.

“COVID-19 has threatened the health, the economic security, and the physical security of women everywhere,” she warned in a video address recorded in Washington.

Von der Leyen, the first woman to head the EU executive, touted her plans to insist on transparency and in hiring and salaries to incite European companies to close the gender pay gap. The women in Europe are paid 14 percent less than men and only 67 percent are in paid work, compared to 78 percent of men. “This is simply not acceptable,” she said.

“At the same time, women comprise 70 percent of the global health workforce, putting them on the front lines and at risk of contracting the virus,” Harris said.

The European Commission was “surprised” that Belgium extended a ban on non-essential travel to other European Union (EU) countries until mid-April, said a spokesperson on Monday.

Belgium announced on Friday the extension of its travel restriction measure, originally to be lifted on April 1, for another 17 days until April 18. The country, along with some other EU members, has forbidden its residents to travel abroad except for “imperative reasons” as a COVID-19 containment measure.

The European Commission deemed the measure contrary to EU law, which guarantees free movement for its residents and citizens within the Schengen area.

The EU executive sent letters to a number of countries implementing travel bans a fortnight ago, asking them to respect the “principle of proportionality” and to replace the travel ban with “more targeted measures,” said European Commission spokesperson for justice, equality and rule of law Christian Wigand.

As of Monday, the commission has received replies from Germany, Finland and Belgium. However, the answer from the Belgian authorities did not mention the new extension.

The commission will analyze the replies received from the relevant member states and will “quickly examine all options on the table,” said Wigand.

“Free movement is a fundamental freedom. We will continue to act to ensure that the recommendations adopted by the EU Council are respected and to avoid travel bans,” tweeted EU Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders on Monday.

BRUSSELS, March 8 (Xinhua) — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday laid out the vision of turning Europe into a continent of equal opportunities for men and women.

“I know we are not there yet. I know that the playing field is not level yet,” she said at a European Parliament event marking the International Women’s Day. “I know from experience that women have to work twice as hard to get the same salary, the same recognition or the same leadership position as their male colleagues. I know the obstacles and the prejudices.”

She outlined the proposals presented by the European Commission last week to address what she described as “the two greatest injustices that women still face: the gender pay gap and the gender employment gap.”

She explained how women in Europe are paid on average 14 percent less than men, and why the Commission proposed the Directive for Pay Transparency.

The employment rate for women in Europe stands at 67 percent, while that for men is 78 percent. “This is simply not acceptable,” she said.

The second proposal aims to address this problem by targeting that 78 percent of all women must have a job by the end of the decade. She said childcare will be strengthened “because no women or men should have to choose between being a mother or father or having a career.”

Monday’s event also featured a video message from the United States Vice President Kamala Harris, who stressed how building a world that works for women was “not just an act of goodwill”, but a “show of strength.”

“If we build a world that works for women, our nations will all be safer, stronger and more prosperous,” she told members of the European Parliament.

She suggested initiatives such as ensuring women’s safety at home, access to high-quality health care, treating women with dignity at work and having the right mechanisms to enable women to both care for their families and excel in the workforce.