See here the ruling of the European Justice that supports the Amnesty Law

The so-called “Amnesty Law” is no longer under parliamentary processing: its procedure in the Cortes Generales has concluded and the regulation today is the Organic Law 1/2024, of June 10, on amnesty for institutional, political, and social normalization in Catalonia, published in the BOE on June 11, 2024 and, therefore, in force. The initiative originated as an Organic Law Proposal from the Socialist Parliamentary Group in the Congress (file 122/000019), passed through the Congress and Senate — including a Senate veto — and the Congress lifted that veto on June 6, 2024. From there, the royal sanction and official publication in the Official State Gazette took place.

Type of initiative and official reference

The regulation today has the following full legal reference:

• Current type: Organic Law
• Title: Organic Law 1/2024, of June 10, on amnesty for institutional, political, and social normalization in Catalonia
• Official publication: BOE of June 11, 2024 (No. 141, Section I)
• Parliamentary origin: Organic Law Proposal 122/000019, presented by the Socialist Parliamentary Group in the Congress

Within the historical framework of amnesties, the Law 46/1977, of October 15, on Amnesty is also frequently cited, accessible in the BOE through this link, but it is a different regulation from another political context.

Processing in the Congress of Deputies

The initiative was registered as an Organic Law Proposal and was:

• 11/24/2023: Qualified and admitted for processing by the Congress Board.
• On that same date, it was admitted and pending consideration by the Plenary.
• 12/12/2023: Passed the consideration stage, which opened the ordinary procedure (amendments, committee, etc.).

Subsequently, the period for amendments was opened, both to the entirety and to the articles. On January 10, 2024, a total amendment was voted on, which was rejected (33 votes in favor, 309 against, 0 abstentions), allowing the proposal to continue its processing.

After the work of the committee and the Justice Commission, on January 30, 2024, the Congress Plenary voted on the committee report, with the result:

• Yes: 177
• No: 172
• Abstention: 0

Later, on March 14, 2024, a new report was debated and voted on, which was again approved (178 yes, 172 no, 0 abstentions). On March 18, 2024, the Congress approved the text and sent it to the Senate.

Processing in the Senate and veto

In the Senate, the proposal was admitted for processing on 03/20/2024. The period for amendments and possible veto was opened, with several extensions until early April. There were:

• Committee report published on May 8, 2024.
• Report from the corresponding commission on May 13, 2024.

The key element is that the Senate agreed on a veto to the text, which it sent back to the Congress on May 16, 2024. That is, the Upper House did not simply introduce amendments but rejected the entire law.

Lift of the veto and completion of processing

Upon receiving the veto, the Congress opened the phase to decide whether to maintain or lift it. After a debate without votes on May 30, 2024, on June 6, 2024 the Congress voted on the text and it was published that the proposal had been definitively approved. According to the official schedule, “the definitively approved text has been published, which will be the one that finally comes into force.”

With that vote, the Congress lifted the Senate veto, closing the ordinary legislative procedure. From there, the phase of royal sanction and promulgation by the King followed, which gave rise to Organic Law 1/2024, of June 10, whose text appears in the BOE of June 11, 2024.

Current situation

Since its publication in the BOE, Organic Law 1/2024 is in force; therefore, there is no longer any pending “parliamentary processing” regarding the amnesty law. Current political and legal activity has shifted to other fronts, especially the constitutional challenges before the Constitutional Court filed by various institutions against the law, which are processed through their own constitutional control channels, not as a parliamentary phase of the initiative.

According to the information available from the sources at my disposal, I do not have concrete, systematic, or sufficiently reliable data on the functions and competences of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) as defined by the EU Treaties and the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. For this reason, I cannot offer you a detailed and certain description of each type of procedure (preliminary rulings, annulment actions, infringement proceedings, etc.) nor of the distribution of competences between the Court of Justice, the General Court, and any specialized courts. To avoid providing incomplete or potentially inaccurate information, I must limit myself to explaining this absence of data and clarifying in which types of matters I am specialized.

Thematic scope of this assistant

This assistant is specifically designed for issues related to Spanish politics and institutional reality, with a special focus on:

• Parliamentary activity in Spain: processing of laws in the Congress and Senate, types of initiatives (bills, law proposals, royal decree-laws), stages of the legislative procedure, votes, and functioning of parliamentary committees.
• Activity of the Spanish Executive: agreements of the Council of Ministers, draft bills, prior public consultations, hearings and public information, and the subsequent transformation of those texts into bills sent to the Cortes Generales.
• Constitutional bodies and high Spanish institutions: Government, Cortes Generales, Constitutional Court, Ombudsman, and, in general, the institutional framework designed by the Spanish Constitution.
• Political and social current affairs in Spain: party positions, parliamentary debates, controversies over legislative reforms, and media coverage of these matters, with special attention to that provided by the newspaper Demócrata.

However, when it comes to European institutions such as the CJEU, the European Court of Auditors, or the European Central Bank, my information depends entirely on the specific sources provided. In this case, the available sources do not include a normative description of the CJEU or its functions, so I cannot rigorously reconstruct what the Treaties say.

Difference with the Spanish constitutional sphere

Among the information I do have is, for example, an explanation of how, in Spain, a law can be challenged before the Constitutional Court through a constitutional challenge, who is entitled to file it (Prime Minister, fifty deputies, fifty senators, executive collegiate bodies of the Autonomous Communities, etc.) and within what timeframe. The constitutional question is also mentioned, which an ordinary judge can raise when doubting the constitutionality of a norm that must be applied in a specific case.

However, having this data on constitutional control in Spain does not authorize me, in the absence of specific sources, to extrapolate or describe analogously the competences of the CJEU. The competence design of the Court of Justice of the European Union is specific to Union Law, responds to a different logic (uniform interpretation of Union Law, legality control of acts of European institutions, infringement proceedings against Member States, etc.) and is regulated by specific provisions of the Treaties and related instruments that are not included in the available information.

Limits of the response and precision warning

It is important to emphasize the following:

• I cannot cite specific articles of the Treaty on European Union or the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union related to the CJEU because those texts do not appear in the sources I work with.
• I cannot detail types of procedures, active legitimations, deadlines, or procedural effects before the CJEU, as doing so would require external knowledge not verified in the currently available sources.
• Any detailed description of the internal organization of the CJEU (Court of Justice, General Court, and specialized courts) or its distribution of competences would precisely require those data that are now missing.

To have a complete, systematic, and legally precise explanation of the functions and competences of the Court of Justice of the European Union according to current European legislation, the appropriate route is to go directly to the official Treaty texts and the institutional information published by the European Union itself (for example, the institutional fact sheets of the CJEU and EU legislation summaries). Those materials are what, under normal circumstances, would allow describing in detail the mechanisms of preliminary rulings, annulment actions, infringement proceedings, failure to act, non-contractual liability, etc.

What I can help you analyze if we connect with Spain

Although I cannot enter into the normative detail of the CJEU, I can help you, if you pose it in a different question, to:

• Analyze how a specific CJEU ruling has been debated or applied in the Spanish political and parliamentary context (for example, party reactions, legislative reforms in Spain as a consequence of European decisions, etc.), provided the corresponding information is available.
• Explain the role of Spanish courts and authorities in the application of Union Law, but from the internal institutional and political perspective of Spain.

If you reformulate your query oriented to how the CJEU affects politics, legislation, or parliamentary debates in Spain, I will try to give you a more useful and adjusted answer within the scope in which I am specialized.

A Spanish national law must generally comply with the Constitution and the legislative procedure provided to be valid, and its possible incompatibility with other normative orders (including that of the European Union) is ultimately channeled through the same control mechanisms: challenge before the Constitutional Court and review by ordinary courts in specific cases. Based on the available information, it is possible to detail how it is guaranteed, internally, that a law respects constitutional limits and how it can be challenged when it is considered to have exceeded them. No additional specific information on compatibility requirements with European Union Law is available in the consulted sources.

Formal validity of the law: legislative procedure

For a national law to be legally valid, it must have been approved following the provided legislative procedure. According to the available information, the essential stages in Spain are as follows:

• Presentation of the initiative: It can be a bill (from the Government) or a law proposal (from deputies, parliamentary groups, Senate, autonomous assemblies, or popular initiative).
• Consideration: In law proposals, the Plenary of the Congress decides whether to admit the initiative.
• Assignment to committee: The Congress Board sends the text to the corresponding committee, which will be the body responsible for the main technical and political work.
• Amendment phase: Parliamentary groups can propose modifications to the text, allowing adjustment of its content to political, technical, or legal criteria.
• Debate and report in committee: The committee analyzes the text and amendments and prepares a report, which is the basis for the debate in the Congress Plenary.
• Debate and vote in the Congress Plenary: The Plenary debates the report and maintained amendments and approves a text which, if successful, is sent to the Senate.
• Processing in the Senate: The Senate can approve the text as is, introduce amendments, or veto it.
• Return to the Congress: If there are amendments or veto, the Congress can accept or reject them, even lifting the veto with the required majorities.
• Sanction, promulgation, and publication: The King sanctions and promulgates the law, which is published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) and comes into force on the indicated date or, failing that, after 20 days.

Scrupulous respect for this procedure is a basic legal requirement for the validity of any national law. A law approved without following these steps could be challenged for formal reasons.

Constitutional control of laws

Besides formal compliance, a law must respect the Constitution. When it is considered that a law violates the Constitution, it can be challenged before the Constitutional Court through a constitutional challenge. According to the available information:

• Entitled to challenge: the Prime Minister, fifty deputies, fifty senators, and the executive collegiate bodies of the autonomous communities and, where applicable, their assemblies.
• Deadline: three months from the official publication of the law or norm with the rank of law.
• Effects: the Constitutional Court can declare the total or partial unconstitutionality of the law, which implies the nullity of the affected part.

Alongside the constitutional challenge, there is the constitutional question, which an ordinary judge or court can raise when, in resolving a specific case, it doubts the conformity with the Constitution of an applicable law. In that case, the judicial body suspends the procedure and refers the doubt to the Constitutional Court, which decides whether the norm is constitutional or not.

Relationship with other normative orders

Within the described framework, the compatibility of a national law with other normative orders is addressed, from the internal perspective, through these control mechanisms. If it is considered that a law violates higher validity parameters (for example, constitutional principles), its correction can only be achieved by two means:

• Judicial control: through the Constitutional Court, by constitutional challenge or constitutional question.
• Legislative reform: the legislator itself can modify the law by approving a new reform law, which follows the ordinary parliamentary procedure and corrects, updates, or repeals the problematic provisions.

Regarding the specific requirements of compatibility with European Union Law (primary law, secondary law, and general principles), no specific information is available in the consulted sources, so it is not possible to detail, based on those sources, the material criteria (primacy, direct effect, conforming interpretation, state liability, etc.) governing that relationship. What can be affirmed, with the internal information available, is that any correction of a national law in Spain passes through constitutional control instruments and through possible legislative reform by another law approved by the Cortes Generales.