Magrete Auken MEP and Charles Svoboda listen to victims last month

Big Freeze Warning

A freeze on funding to Spain moved closer this week as the European Parliament’s powerful petitions committee called for sanctions over the land grab crisis. The committee formerly adopted the highly critical report on the notorious laws that have permitted “extensive urbanisation” while steamrolling over the rights of legitimate property owners.

Despite a desperate rearguard action by an alliance of Spain’s conservative Partido Popular and socialist PSOE, Danish MEP Margrete Auken’s report will now be debated by parliament next month. The committee voted on Wednesday by 24 to 11, with one abstention, to accept the Green MEP’s call to end the abuse of land grab and what has been described as “theft” and likened to the tactics of Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator Robert Mugabe.

Under Valencia’s LRAU and replacement LUV laws, people face seeing property seized without compensation by developers and having to pay massive bills for the installation of infrastructure as new homes are built. Brussels has already declared the legislation a breach of human rights and of environmental law and illegal – while the petitions committee has received more than 20,000 calls for help from victims.

AID
MEPs have called for the suspension of EU aid to Spain until the problem is solved – and note that the parliament as the budgetary authority can set funding aside if it was felt necessary “to persuade a Member State to end serious breaches of the rules and principles it is obliged to accept.” And the committee has demanded the Spanish regional authorities – Valencia is named and shamed in the report – should suspend all new urbanisation plans that do not take into consideration the criteria of environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and the rights of owners.

It has also called for protection for those who bought homes in good faith from unscrupulous developers but later saw their dream homes declared illegal.
Sir Robert Atkins, a Tory MEP, said after the vote: “The scandalous behaviour of some developers, builders, and local authorities resulting in people losing their homes has to stop now. The emotional and financial trauma suffered by so many legitimate home owners has to be rectified. “The European Parliament has expressed a forceful condemnation of Spanish land law and its implementation and it is imperative that all political parties in Spain understand the anger of residents and act to change the law as soon as possible.”

CAMPAIGN
Veteran campaigner Charles Svoboda, of Abusos Urbanisticos NO, thanked the committee for its “overwhelming support” for a report “harshly critical” of land law and environmental abuses the AUN had signalled from the very start of its campaigning. He said the group regretted the criticism was still warranted. “The report, as an expression of the collective will of an important and representative EU body, must again be a wake up call for the authorities in this country at all levels to comply with the norms of the EU, membership of which Spain has benefitted so richly, assuming it wishes to go on doing so.”

And Charles said the vote showed that the “strange and recent alliance” of Valencian politicians “could not succeed in crushing the rights and concerns of those in the region who have been victims of land law and related abuses in recent years.” He said the “get tough” message must be heard by the European Commission and the European Courts when they acted on breaches of EU law. “This process has been a victory for truth, transparency, commonsense, and citizens’ participation in the workings of the EU,” Charles concluded. “But it is not yet a victory here for justice or the rule of law. That will be up to the authorities in this country to insure now, given the impetus to do so from Brussels. Failing this, the courts in this country should also insure that EU law is fully respected when they deal with cases involving development and environmental issues.”