The Minister of Foreign Affairs faces a one-year ban for having been part of the organization of the October 1 referendum
The Minister of Foreign Affairs faces a trial this Wednesday for disobedience at the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia. The Prosecutor’s Office is asking Meritxell Serret for a year of disqualification and a fine of 12,000 euros.
The judgment comes just the day after Clara Ponsatí’s return from exile. If she is convicted, Serret will have to stop being Minister of Foreign Affairs when the sentence is final.
She is on trial for having been part of the organization of the referendum, as Minister of Agriculture, on October 1, 2017.
The Prosecutor’s Office considers that he disobeyed the Constitutional Court when he approved the 2017 budgets and when he signed the decree calling for the referendum.
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The court that will judge her is chaired by Fernando Lacaba and the magistrates Francisco Segura and Marta Pesqueira. This was after the resignation of the president of the TSJ, Jesús María Barrientos, and Carlos Ramos.
Both magistrates resigned from being members of the Court to prevent a repeat of the annulment of the trial at the table of Carme Forcadell, in which both were challenged for lack of impartiality. Apart from the prosecutor, the prosecution is also carried out by the State Attorney’s Office and Vox.
Serret went into exile in Belgium and returned voluntarily two years ago, after the removal of the warrants against her. He appeared before the Supreme Court, where he was provisionally released without bail or any precautionary measures.
It is a way that both Clara Ponsatí and Carles Puigdemont have openly criticized, pointing out that the former Minister of Agriculture should have acted as Ponsatí has now done.
Serret collected the act of deputy of the Parliament, where she had been elected in the last elections, in February 2021. When Junts left the government, Serret replaced Victòria Alsina as the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Affairs.
In June 2018, with the government of Quim Torra, Serret was appointed delegate of the Generalitat in Brussels, the only foreign delegation of the government that was not closed with the application of article 155.