BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The European Union’s top court issued a ruling Tuesday that allows Spain to make another attempt to seek the extradition of a former Catalan separatist politician living in Brussels.

But the Court of Justice of the EU introduced several caveats that do little to clarify what is to come next in a legal and diplomatic saga that is five years running and shows no sign of ending anytime soon.

Spain has unsuccessfully tried to get Belgium to hand over former Catalan government member Lluís Puig since he and ex-Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont fled Barcelona along with other cohorts following their illegal 2017 secession bid for Spain’s Catalonia region.

The Belgian courts justified their repeated refusals by agreeing with Puig that Spain’s Supreme Court, which requested his extradition, lacked jurisdiction — instead arguing that a lower court in Catalonia should take the case — and that he would not get a fair trial.

However, the European court based in Luxembourg, in a ruling made on a request by Spain’s Supreme Court to clarify the situation, said an EU country should only refuse to execute a European Arrest Warrant issued by another member state under “exceptional” circumstances.