Spain has joined Poland in becoming the second country this week to claim it could ditch the EU, amid growing fury at the power that Brussels holds over member-states. Spain’s third biggest party Vox is under huge pressure to back the Spanish version of the Brexit referendum, following growing fury at an ECJ ruling this week. Vox’s own party president lambasted the EU, claiming when the ECJ overruled Spanish courts, it had humiliated the country and its sovereignty.
On Thursday, the EU’s top court ruled a jailed Catalan separatist leader should have parliamentary immunity.
Oriol Junqueras was one of nine pro-independence leaders jailed in Spain after an illegal independence referendum.
However, in May he was elected to the European Parliament as an MEP.
The ruling rejected Madrid’s arguments that Mr Junqueras did not qualify as an MEP because he had not sworn an oath to the Spanish constitution.
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A furious reaction among Spaniards even led ‘Spaxit’ – the Spanish exit of the European Union – to become trending on Twitter.
Vox President Santiago Abascal criticised the judges in Luxembourg who ruled that Mr Junqueras, who was sentenced to 13 years for sedition, should be freed.
He immediately tweeted that Spain “should not have to comply” with the ECJ ruling.
He went on to claim that Spain should hit back at “this interference,” before adding that Vox “is not going to accept more humiliations”.
The outrage in Spain comes just days as Poland’s Supreme Court warned that the country might have to leave the EU over its judicial reform proposals.
The proposals would allow judges to be dismissed if they questioned the government’s judicial reforms.
Supreme Court judges wrote that the proposals threaten the primacy of EU law and could be an attempt to gag the judiciary.
The Supreme Court said: “Contradictions between Polish and EU law will in all likelihood lead to an intervention by EU institutions regarding an infringement of EU treaties, and in the longer run will lead to the need to leave the European Union.”