Basque government will return all fines from the first state of alarm

Josu Erkoreka, Basque Security Councillor, has announced that the Basque government will return all fines paid in the first state of alarm.

Josu Erkoreka, Basque Security Councillor, has announced that the Basque government will return all fines paid in the first state of alarm for failure to comply with the measures established to stop the pandemic that were later annulled by the Constitutional Court.

In total, he estimates that they would amount to about €1.6 million.

The councillor acknowledges that the Constitutional resolution, which annulled some of the measures of the state of alarm, with the corresponding paralysis of the sanctions fines for non-compliance, “has an immense demotivating effect for those who we are managing the responsibility of public health.”

It was in mid-July when it was declared unconstitutional that the general confinement of the population of Pedro Sanchez’s first declared a state of alarm.

Throughout the first state of alarm, he explains, between local police and Ertzaintza they filed 22,900 complaints that “require a very important processing effort” and that were not “a whim, because the health and lives of many people depended on compliance with the regulations..” However, “the work has been for nothing.”

It also warns that the sentence contained “a confusing mandate,” so “the files in process were suspended, but there were other cases.”

Specifically, there were about 5,200 promptly paid, while “other people had made their allegations, had resisted, and had waited for the final sanctioning resolution. The sanctioning were about 2,900,” he explains.

After “a proven legal analysis,” the Basque government has come to the conclusion that “the sentence requires the undoing of practically the entire sanctioning framework.”

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