The decisions of the judges are not the goals of a sports competition, as certain reactions to the Luxembourg ruling have suggested. We are not facing a win in the classic of politics after a sober demonstration in the football classic regarding the authentic situation of the country, bogged down in an eternal tie, no matter how the patriots read it from one side to the other, defeated some and victorious the others. They agree on their doubtful Europeanism, which converts the European instances into foreign courts meddled in national sovereignty or, which is the same but vice versa, European justice corrective for the undemocratic defects of Spanish justice.
Both are wrong. The Court of Justice of the European Union is also a court to which Spain contributes its judges and whose jurisdiction over European powers Spain recognizes and defends. The same applies to the Human Rights Court of Strasbourg, under the Council of Europe, although in this case its scope is more specialized and geographically broader. Both are part of the Spanish rule of law, in whose structure they are inserted thanks to the Spanish Constitution.
We are not facing a law à la carte, which allows us to choose the client’s taste, as Artur Mas intended when he assured that Catalonia would exercise the right of self-determination in accordance with existing legal frameworks, implying that if he did not like some he would find others . Legal frameworks, as a rule of law, there is only one. Those who advocate unilateralism and the malicious violation of the Constitution have every right to defend themselves before all instances of the rule of law. It is greatness and at the same time the servitude of a guarantee democracy: it gives rights and defends even those who take away rights and attack democracy.
The European judgment also allows a clarifying function regarding the rule of law and European integration, two concepts that go hand in hand. It is not possible to defend the rule of law and attack European sentences or defend European sentences and attack the rule of law at the same time. Europe writes straight with crooked strokes.
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