Danish MEP Magrete Auken - Photo courtesy of sfpolitik

Europe Threatens Big Chill

Danish MEP: Land Grab Abuse Must End

European Union funding could be frozen unless Spain acts to end the massive urban developments abusing people’s rights and environmental law.

A draft report hits out at both Madrid and the regional authorities for their repeated failure to respect the European Treaty and protect citizens, property, and the countryside. Penned by Magrete Auken the hard-hitting preliminary report is expected to be debated by the European Parliament in the New Year. And it means Spain is besieged on three sides over controversial and notorious ‘land grab’ legislation – the kingdom already faces a potentially embarrassing case in the European Court of Justice, while hundreds of individual cases are due to be heard in the European Court of Human Rights.

In her draft motion, the Danish MEP underlines powers to “interrupt the payment of structural funding” and “suspend” payments to a member state or region failing to correct projects in breach of strict EU law. And she writes that cash can be “set aside” if necessary “in order to persuade a member state to end serious breaches of the rules” it was obliged to respect under the EU treaty and law.

HELP
Mrs Auken is a member of the European Parliament’s petitions committee which has received more than 20,000 complaints from people living in Spain and appeals for help. The committee has already reported three times on urbanisation abuses and the European Commission – criticised for a lack of forceful action – is currently investigating 250 projects awaiting approval in Andalucía, Castilla-la-Mancha, Murcia and Valencia. And she noted that there was evidence Spanish courts were responding to the challenge of investigating “corrupt local officials” unprecedented and unregulated development to the “detriment” of the rights of European citizens and “damaging” the environment.

Mrs Auken said the abuse was compounded by thousands of people not only losing their legitimately acquired property but also being “forced to pay the arbitrary cost of unwanted, often unnecessary and unwarranted infrastructure projects” leaving families facing “financial and emotional catastrophe”. And in a damning paragraph, she said in different circumstances thousands had bought property in good faith only to find later they were the victims of “unscrupulous local authorities” and found their homes were illegal and faced demolition “and therefore worthless an un-saleable.” The motion calls on regional authorities “to declare a moratorium on all new urbanisation plans” which did not respect the strict criteria of environmental sustainability and did not guarantee legitimate rights were respected.

COMPENSATE
In a controversial move, Spanish authorities will be urged to undertake “to provide means of redress and of compensation for the victims of urbanisation abuse for citizens and residents who have suffered under the provisions of existing legislation such as the LRAU and LUV.” And the politician calls for all parts of the construction industry to work with political authorities and the EU itself to find solutions to existing problems that had affected “hundreds of thousands” of Europeans who had chosen to settle in Spain. She said Madrid must act where regional authorities were not fulfilling their obligations to EU citizens. Mrs Auken expressed her “concern and dismay that the legal and judicial authorities in Spain have shown themselves to be largely ill-prepared and inadequate in dealing with the impact of massive urbanisation on people’s lives.”

However, she praised regional ombudsmen, their staff and “more assiduous” investigating magistrates who had taken “enormous” steps in recent times to restore the integrity of certain institutions. She also praised the activity of petitioners, their associations and local community groups – tens of thousands of Spanish and non-Spanish citizens – for bringing abuses to light and their help in “safeguarding the fundamental rights” of all those affected by the enormous and complex problem.