Agreement reached to reform parliament regulation to permit voting remotely

A majority of lawmakers in the Catalan parliament will support a change to the chamber's regulations to allow remote voting.

The move has the support of the Socialists, Junts, Esquerra Republicana (ERC), the Comuns, and CUP.

The change will favor leader of Junts and their presidential candidate, Carles Puigdemont, as well as MPs Lluís Puig and Ruben Wagensberg, all of whom are currently residing abroad.

Puigdemont led the Catalan government during the peak of the independence push, and has been living in Belgium ever since late 2017. He was elected as an MP in May's Catalan election, but has not stepped foot in the country in almost seven years. 

The five parties have jointly registered the modification of the text to allow voting online remotely in "exceptional and duly justified" situations. 

With the new mechanism, MPs will be able to change groups during the first five days of each session period. This change will allow parliamentary groups to transfer some lawmakers to far-left pro-independence CUP so that they can form their own parliamentary group, and then return to their original party.

The reform also expands the circumstances in which votes can be delegated. Until now, only MPs in hospital, with a serious illness, a prolonged incapacity, or who are on maternity or paternity leave could delegate their vote.

Now it will also be allowed to delegate votes if there are "duly justified exceptional" situations, such as in remote voting, that "impede the development of the parliamentary function."

Days before the first parliamentary session of the new term, in which the parliament speaker and bureau were elected, the Constitutional Court overturned Lluís Puig's right to vote online.