In 2008, the European Union approved the recasting of the Union’s prison sentences, which meant that years of imprisonment of prisoners sentenced in different states for the same crime would be unified. For example, one person was sentenced to seven years in prison for belonging to an armed group in Germany and, after his execution, was extradited to Poland, where he was again tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Well, being convicted of the same crime, he must now be eight years old and will be released. If he were in Spain, the prisoner would have to be in full fifteen years, so in total he would be in prison for 22 years.

That is what has happened to many Basque prisoners, and many of them should already be on the street. But when the directive came into force in Spain in 2014, the PP that was then in the government decided to derogate from this law: it would only apply to prisoners convicted after 2010, so that a lot of Basque prisoners would be left out of that measure.

According to reports this Thursday, when six years ago EH Bildu and the PSOE negotiated the support of the former, EH Bildu put the issue of prisoners on the table and to this end, he gradually requested the repeal of the emergency measures for Basque prisoners. And in this logic, the PSOE ended the dispersion, in the long process that culminated in 2023.

According to such an approach, the directive on sentencing will also be repealed and the procedure for amending the law has been in place for months in Congress. Among others, 11 occasions have been tabled in which amendments have been tabled to the entire budget, and no one has been tabled. The amendment has unanimously crossed each of the doors to be crossed. The legislative route has therefore been overlooked by several victims’ associations who have discovered that this art affects several ETA members and that some of them will be on the street shortly.

The pp and Vox have made self-criticism then and have acknowledged that this is a mistake, have asked for forgiveness from victim associations and have demanded the PSOE to "rectify". The amendment of the law has been dealt with by Sumar, and the PSOE has announced that it will go ahead with the appointment of the plenary session held this Thursday in the Spanish Senate.

Request for review of penalties for 40 years

Thirteen years from the end of ETA’s armed activity will be completed within three months, and according to ETXERAT data, there are still 130 prisoners in the Basque Political Prisoners Collective. Once this derogation has been repealed, the following objectives would be the third grade and law 7/2003. The third grade is a kind of string pull from the National High Court and the Boards of Penitentiary Institutions and Basque political prisoners have difficulty getting out with it.

However, the biggest problem now is Law 7/2003, which the PP put into effect in 2003, to extend to 40 years the maximum penalty of 30 years in cases of terrorism. In essence, this was a measure to punish ETA prisoners more. According to ETXERAT data, this law would currently affect more than 60 prisoners of eta. ETA disappeared six years ago, and in this context there have been many occasions when prisoners have called for the repeal of this law and, if not, for the review of penalties. Several European countries recognize the penalty of life imprisonment in their legislation, but in practice it is not complied with, as they have mechanisms for reviewing the sentence at the age of 15 or at the age of 20, at the age of 25... when the prisoner leaves the street.