Rulings of The European Court of Human Rights
At the time of its outlawing in Spain, Batasuna lawyers took the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). After a long legal inquiry, in July 2009 the ECHR backed the Spanish rulings banning Batasuna and its proxies.
The ECHR said that disbanding the parties was a response "to a pressing social need" given their ties to ETA. "Given the situation in Spain for several years regarding terrorist attacks, these ties can be considered objectively as a threat to democracy," the court said, also adding that these parties "contradicted the concept of a 'democratic society' and presented a major danger to Spain's democracy".
Similarly, when the outlawed Batasuna tried to use Acción Nacionalista Vasca as a proxy to re-organize its ranks, in a different case the ECHR also upheld in 2011 the previous Spanish court rulings which had outlawed ANV, noting that this party had not run by itself in elections since 1977 and that it basically conformed a "fraud" to circumvent the outlawing of Batasuna.
Read more about this topic: Batasuna
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