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SPAIN: Law to make Batasuna illegal

01 March 2002

The Spanish government is on the verge of approving a law that is expressly aimed at making Basque political party Batasuna illegal. The draft Law on Political Parties was approved on 16 April by the Consejo General del Poder Judicial (General Council of Judicial Power). The judicial body was divided, as only the 11 magistrates appointed by the ruling Partido Popular (PP) voted in favour. Eight others considered that some of the articles are unconstitutional. The criticism of this draft is based on the belief that it is unconstitutional that the law may be applied to events that occurred before its entry into force; on the belief that it is not sufficient that illegalisation can be demanded by 50 members of parliament or 50 senators; the discrepancy of the fact that the competent body for decisions regarding the disbanding of a party be a Special Court of the Supreme Court rather than the ordinary judiciary, that is, the Civil Court of the Supreme Court; finally, the ambiguity and vagueness with which the acts deemed illegal are described. The PP is willing to approve this law (it has a majority in the Parliament) despite the fact that the entire opposition opposes it.
The Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) has already announced that it will present an appeal against the law to the European courts. This initiative coincides with the recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights which repealed another illegalisation decreed by the Turkish State against a political organisation. That was the Party of the Workers of the People, founded in 1990 and disbanded three years later because the Constitutional Court ruled that it “seeks the division of national integrity”. As happened in previous instances - at least three such cases have been annulled in Europe - the court decreed that Ankara contravened the Treaty of Rome, annulled the prohibition and fined the Turkish state for causing “moral damage”.