Some activists in Spain are asking this question. The presidency of the Council of the European Union, or Consillium, rotates every six months. Spain is scheduled to take the lead on 1 July. But there are doubts.

A Spanish alliance has called for Spain to be declared as having serious systemic deficiencies with its rule of law. The request is based upon its own complaints and report on the Spanish Rule of Law in 2022.

This Alliance is composed of four associations, a social movement, and a group of individuals whose activities are related to denunciation of institutional corruption and administrative and judicial defense of victims of “(institutional ) metamafia”, or the defense of human rights. The Alliance is known as “Denouncers of Judicial Authoritarianism”.

Javier Marzal is the spokesperson and promoter of the Alliance.

"Our set of complaints to the European Commission and the Spanish Supreme Court reflect the Spanish institutional reality and the political and economic danger it poses to the European Union and its member countries".

The first complaint covers the first four years under the current Spanish government headed by Pedro Sanchez. The complaint was sent to the European Commission on 11 November 2022. In an unusual move, the Commission agreed to process it under the Economic Unit F3, and registered the complaint as Ares(2022)8174536. The main allegations are that numerous public documents have been falsified and that the government has usurped the Parliament to legislate, and increase public spending without any control. This is up to twice the maximum amount of spending by the previous government.

The second complaint was sent to the Directorate for Fundamental Rights and the Rule of Law on 27 January 2023. The request was accepted and the complaint was processed at Unit C1 under Ares(2023)1525948. This double processing of complaints is also unprecedented.

Marzal says that the set of complaints has been completed by the amplifying complaint dated 15 April 2023. It is “the peacetime complaint with most brutal facts in Europe’s history”.

The Alliance then submitted its report on Spanish rule of Law, requesting the European Commission to declare that Spain suffers from serious systemic deficiencies with its rule of laws and that they promote the suspension of Spain’s presidency of the Consillium till Spain proves that it has a law. The Alliance proposes to put the suspension up for a vote at the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, among the presidents of the government of the Member States.

Two MEPs, Eniko Gyori from Portugal and Eniko Gyori from Hungary, made the same request at the annual plenary of the European Parliament on January 2023. Eniko Gyori served as the Hungarian ambassador to Spain between 2014 and 2019, so she is familiar with the Spanish situation.

Several MEPs have also sent complaints and petitions about the rule of Law and the Consillium presidency to the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, as well as several European governments.

It is the first occasion that European officials and individuals have called for a declaration stating that the rule of Law has been weakened in an EU member state and the suspension of Consillium’s Presidency.

As a precedent, the European Commission warned Spain in October of 2022 that they would not provide any more funds to Spain for reconstruction following the Coronavirus Crisis if the Spanish Government did not specify the destination of the funds.

The European Commission failed to inform the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control, (CONT), about the destination of Next Generation EU funds transferred into Spain. Monika Hohlmeier decided to meet the Spanish government to clarify this serious issue. A group of ten MEPs led by Germany’s Hohlmeier were in Madrid from 20 to 22 February.

She said at the end of the meeting: “It’s impossible to trace funds to the final beneficiaries”, because Spain had not fulfilled its commitment in setting up the CoFFEE Platform that the Spanish Government promised Brussels would be running by November 2021.

MEP Susana Solis stated: “We do not know where the 3 billion dollars that have already been allocated went.” Marzal states that “in Spain, the European Union has been strongly criticized for having granted 37 billion Euros to Spain with no guarantees regarding the destination of Next Generation EU funds and also knowing fully well the contempt of the current government’s legality”.

The Coronavirus Crisis, and the Next Generation EU Funds have brought the European Union to a difficult economic and political situation that is beginning the process of eliminating excessive permissiveness from governments. We must not forget that the European Statistical Office published in 2018 that corruption in the European Union took 4.8% of the GDP. In this regard, Marzal says

"The figures of corruption in Spain and in the European Union do not allow us to affirm that the rule of law is working properly, as European officials irresponsibly claim. Corruption threatens to economically collapse several countries and the European Union itself, but the situation is an opportunity to solve this serious problem".

The Alliance’s Website www.contraautoritarismojudicial.org The report is available in both English and Spanish. The report is also available on French and German.