EU Court Clears Spanish Amnesty

The EU's highest court ruled on 16 July that Spain's Catalan amnesty law does not breach EU law. That matters, but not quite in the way Carles Puigdemont's supporters might have hoped. Luxembourg has removed a European-level objection to the law. It has not cleared the road home from Belgium.

Puigdemont, the former Catalan president, remains in exile because Spain's Supreme Court still refuses to apply the amnesty to his case. His national arrest warrant remains active (CURIA press release No 112/26, Euronews).

What Luxembourg actually decided

Spanish courts had put three questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union, sitting in its Grand Chamber, the formation reserved for the most significant cases. Did the amnesty law damage the EU's financial interests? Did it breach EU anti-terrorism rules? And did its two-month deadline for judges to act push Spanish courts into ignoring legal guidance still pending from Luxembourg?

The answers were careful and limited. Amnesty is, in principle, a matter for member states. Public spending linked to the Catalan independence drive did not automatically amount to harm to the EU budget (Brussels Signal). EU anti-terrorism rules did not bar an amnesty designed around political reconciliation (Al Jazeera). And where the Spanish law's deadline would force a judge to rule before Luxembourg had answered a referred question, the judge must set that deadline aside (CURIA press release).

That is a long way from declaring Puigdemont amnestied. The court did not order Spain to lift his arrest warrant. It did not decide whether the law's exclusion for conduct involving "personal enrichment" applies to him. Those questions remain with Spanish courts (Politico, CURIA press release).

Two courts, two paths, both in Madrid

The Supreme Court still controls Puigdemont's criminal file. Its investigating judge has refused to apply the amnesty to the remaining misuse-of-public-funds charge. The reasoning is the hinge of the case: Spain's amnesty law excludes conduct involving personal benefit, and the judge treats Puigdemont's alleged use of public money for the independence campaign as falling within that category (el Constitucional, NRC).

Luxembourg has weakened one part of that refusal by dismissing the EU-budget argument. But the domestic question remains: does the "personal enrichment" exclusion really cover his case? That is a question of Spanish law, not EU law.

There is a second route through Spain's Constitutional Court. In June 2025, it ruled that the amnesty law was broadly compatible with the Spanish constitution (Brussels Signal). Puigdemont has now filed an amparo, a constitutional appeal arguing that the Supreme Court's refusal to apply the amnesty violates his fundamental rights. If the Constitutional Court overturns the Supreme Court's reading, both the warrant and the amnesty decision would have to be revisited (NRC).

Until a Spanish court formally lifts the arrest warrant, returning from Belgium remains a real legal risk. Belgian and Dutch reporting has put it plainly: Puigdemont is a step closer, but he does not yet have a free pass (De Morgen).

Why Europe is watching a Spanish case

This is a Spanish case, but Europe has been in the frame from the start. Press across several countries treated the ruling as more than a domestic constitutional row. German coverage went back to 2018, when a court in Schleswig-Holstein handled Spain's extradition request for Puigdemont and showed that European Arrest Warrants, the system through which one EU country asks another to surrender a suspect, still run through national legal categories (Deutschlandfunk).

The question then was whether another member state would enforce Spain's warrant. The question now is whether Spain will apply its own amnesty. That is the useful lesson from Luxembourg for any EU capital, including Dublin: the Court of Justice can clear away EU-law objections, but it cannot force a member state to use the political settlement it has written into law.

The CJEU has drawn the line between what EU law can block and what remains a national choice. Spain's amnesty survived that test. Whether Puigdemont benefits from the law his movement helped create is now for the Spanish Supreme Court and Constitutional Court to decide. Luxembourg has narrowed the case. Madrid still controls the door he wants to walk through.