The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) approved this Wednesday an amendment to defend that the new rules of the European Union against corruption include the prohibition for Member States of granting pardons or amnesties for crimes of embezzlement.

The text has gone ahead with 43 votes in favor, 17 against and 6 abstentionsas reported by parliamentary sources, and will be submitted to vote of the plenary session in its second session of February, between the 26th and 29thfor final adoption.

“Member States shall take the necessary measures to prohibit any pardon or amnesty for the benefit of those who have been deemed responsible for any of the criminal offenses referred to in articles 7 to 14 (of the directive), indicates the compromise amendment signed by the European People’s Party (EPP) and the group of Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, in which Vox is a member).

The PP MEP Javier Zarzalejos He has assured that this amendment exposes the Government of Pedro Sánchez because it shows that in the European Parliament “it is not conceivable that corruption crimes be pardoned or amnestied.” “Another defeat for Sánchez,” he, the Vox MEP, wrote on social networks. Jorge Buxade.

All crimes proposed to prohibit amnesty or pardons

Specifically, the crimes included in the aforementioned articles are the following:

• Bribery in the public sector.
• Bribery in the private sector, embezzlement and misappropriation.
• Influence peddling.
• Abuse in the exercise of functions.
• Obstruction of justice.
• Enrichment for crimes of corruption and inducement, complicity and attempt.

The text that results from the vote in the plenary session will be the negotiating mandate that marks the red lines of the European Parliament in the negotiation with the Council (governments) for the reform with which the European Union wants tighten the rules for corruption crimes.

The Twenty-seven have not yet agreed on their position to address this reform, so it is foreseeable that negotiations between the two institutions will not take place until the next legislature, once the European elections in June of this year have passed.