Pedro Sanchez negotiates with the European extreme right a maneuver to save the position of Therese Ribera to the European Commission. The president of the government is now seeking to reach an agreement with Giorgia Meloni And Viktor Orbantwo of the governments that the Spanish leader has until now described as “fascists with whom Alberto Núñez Feijóo wants to get along in the EU”.
Sánchez is trying to obtain the votes of the ultra-conservative ECR party (led by the Italian Meloni) and the Patriots (which Orbán created and now chairs). Santiago Abascal at European level) to overturn the veto of the European People’s Party (EPP) on Ribera. According to Spanish PP sources, “the PSOE negotiates votes Voxby jumping his famous “sanitary cordon”, in exchange for the socialists’ vote for far-right candidates.”
The veto of the EPP in the European Parliament, after an agreement last Monday between its leader, Manfred Weberand Feijóo, the socialists responded by blocking all candidates for vice-presidents of the community executive.
The Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in the European Parliament, led by the Spanish party Iratxe Garciaupped the stakes of the EPP, freezing these last six candidates and warning Weber that they would not give their vote to the candidate for the Italian economic vice-president, Raffaele Fittonor the one designated as neighborhood commissioner, the Hungarian Oliver Varhelyi.
Now Sánchez offers the favorable vote of the social democratic family to these two candidates in exchange for saving Ribera. We thus cross the PSOE red line of not agreeing with the far right, an accusation that has been repeatedly leveled against the EPP. For example, after the failed hearing of the Spanish vice-president last week in Brussels.
“Not with Ribera”
President Sánchez, while attending the G20 meeting in Brazil, took on, on behalf of European socialists, the unpleasant task of calling Meloni and Orbán to secure these votes. If Sánchez concludes this pact with the European far right, the EPP veto would no longer have any effecteven if the popular Spanish people would maintain their vote against Ribera.
Furthermore, official sources from Feijóo’s party warn that they are still willing to have their 22 MEPs. vote against the Ursula von der Leyen Commissionwhen the decision reaches the plenary session of the European Parliament, expected at the end of next week in Strasbourg. “With Ribera, no,” say official sources from the Spanish PP.
For now, the EPP continues to demand that the Spanish candidate give “satisfactory explanations” before the Spanish Cortes Generales, this Wednesday in Congress and the Senate, about its management of the disaster caused by DANA in Valencia, on October 29. Only in the case of “being convincing” in defending your innocenceand if she also undertakes to resign if a judicial investigation ends up implicating her, popular Europeans will reconsider their position.
On this Monday afternoon, Sánchez resumed contacts with Von der Leyen in Rio de Janeirowhere the G20 summit is being held.
German policy insists on the “need” that the community executive will be “constituted and fully operational” on December 1. Especially since a little over a month later, Donald Trump will resume its presidency of the United States and the EU will face “serious challenges”.
Genoa sources admit that although they continue to strive to prevent “a bad minister, who also hides from her responsibilities within DANA, from being awarded in Europe“, or more probably, the maneuver of the Spanish president “to change your principles for the Ribera chair“take effect.
“If Sánchez reaches this agreement with Meloni and Orbán, it is very possible that many EPP MEPs will want to show their commitment to the European consensus,” they admit. “We understand this, but our colleagues also understand our position and Weber himself assumed it as his own“at least for now.
“No arguments”
The PP does not hesitate to lose this battle, according to a spokesperson for Feijóo, “because we will have internationalized the disaster that is sanchism And we will maintain our principles and values“. And because the leadership of Feijóo understands that, if it was no longer willing to vote in favor of Ribera before the DANA, “now we could not explain to the Valencians or to our voters a change of opinion that would not be not real, but imposed.
Furthermore, the popular ones point out that “Sánchez assumes the weariness of losing any argument to accuse the PP of agreeing with Vox, because he He asks for votes from Vox and its European partners so as not to suffer a humiliating defeat“.
In other words, in Genoa, the decision is considered good, even if it ends with the “no” vote of only two MEPs in the European Commission. “Weber, Von der Leyen and the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsolathey know our motivations and understand them. » Furthermore, Feijóo made it clear to the three popular European leaders that they don’t have the ability to prevent it.
According to the sources consulted, it is very likely that, throughout this Tuesday, the next steps that the European institutions will take to resolve the problem will become clearer. the blockade in which the Commission has found itself for a week.
If Sánchez finally guaranteed Von der Leyen in Rio that he already had an agreement with Meloni and Orbán, the EPP would stop demanding that the decision on Ribera be brought to the plenary session of the three committees of the European Parliament which are evaluating its advisability. This scenario is only considered the last option, because in this forum only the threat of the EPP to have “the votes to oppose it” adding the three groups to its right (ECR, Patriotas and Soberanistas).
