Sassoli announces internal investigation over leaked report on three Catalan MEPs

European Parliament president David Sassoli will open an internal investigation over the leak of the Committee on Legal Affairs report dealing with the immunity of three Catalan pro-independence MEPs persecuted by Spain. This was announced at a press conference on Thursday in Brussels. The investigation will be lead by the secretary general of the Chamber, Klaus Welle.

Following the publication in Spain’s ABC newspaper of the report, written by far-right MEP Angel Dzhambazki, the defense of exiled president Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí filed a formal complaint to Sassoli asking for an investigation.

A few days later, just as Dzhambazki was about to present his report, the chairman of the Committee on Legal Affairs, Adrián Vázquez, MEP for Spain’s unionist party Ciudadanos, sent a letter to Sassoli asking him also for an investigation, as the leak was an “extremely serious infraction”. One of the basic rules in such debates is the strict confidentiality of all working documents and also of the deliberations and discussions that take place within the Committee.

The Committee on Legal Affairs includes five Spanish MEPs among the members and three among the substitutes. The members are the president, Adrián Vázquez (Ciudadanos), Ibán García del Blanco (PSOE), Esteban González Pons (PP), Marcos Ros Sempere (PSOE) and Javier Zarzalejos (PP). The substitutes are Jorge Buxadé (Vox), Javier Nart (independent after leaving Ciudadanos) and Nacho Sánchez Amor (PSOE). All of them, along with the other members of the commission, received the report only one day before it was published by the Spanish newspaper.