Pedro Sánchez, on the crime of sedition: "We have a Penal Code that is not comparable to European democracies"

“2017 left us with some lessons for our democracy,” said Pedro Sánchez. In 2017, 1-O occurred, as a result of which half the Catalan government went to jail and another good part to Brussels, where former president Carles Puigdemont is still. And the Prime Minister, when asked about the free path to budget processing by the ERC, PNV and EHBildu, has rejected that it has to do with the reform of the crime of sedition in the Penal Code, for which independence leaders were convicted. to more than ten years in prison in the procés trial for organizing the 1-O.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other, we are facing an order from Vladimir Putin to Europe, and another thing is the approval of our criminal code to the EU, which is a commitment of personal investiture”, said Sánchez after the Council European, in Brussels. The Government has been insisting for some time that the issue of sedition was not part of the budget negotiation, although ERC and its parliamentary spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, have shown interest in linking both folders.

“We have a Penal Code that is not equivalent to the main European democracies in some of the crimes”, Sánchez stated: “From there, it is evident that what I am saying, which is the umpteenth time I have repeated it, cannot be a theory exercise. That commitment has to be forged in the Cortes and for that we need parliamentary support, and today it does not seem that we have it. But we have the commitment that if there is a parliamentary majority, we will fulfill an investiture commitment, a personal one of mine”.

The reform of the Penal Code is part of the coalition agreement between PSOE and UP to form a government and, also, an investiture commitment. This reform has several legs, such as the one derived by the law of the Yes is yes, in addition to the crime of sedition to avoid penalties such as those of the sentences of 1-O. However, some of the government’s parliamentary partners, such as ERC, have so far advocated going further than the government is going, to the point of eliminating crime, not just reforming it. That is why Sánchez says: “We need parliamentary support, and today it does not seem that we have it.”

In relation to the political context of the budgets that opens from now on, Sánchez has insisted: “Since 2015 in our country, three budgets have not been approved in a timely manner. We are a government of 153 seats that does its homework, is socially committed, has a modernization task and everyone reaches out to improve it”.