The second vice-president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, has advanced that United We Can has asked the PSOE for an urgent meeting of the monitoring commission of the coalition pact due to the differences over the increase in military spending and the “concern” that arouses in her that, in full inflation, Defense items reach up to 22,000 million euros.
This has been advanced in statements to the media before participating in the inauguration of the first LGTBI state meeting, organized by UGT, and once the Council of Ministers has approved an extraordinary credit of 1,000 million euros for Defense through of the contingency fund, something that the confederal space has not liked.
In this sense, the leader of the confederal space in the Executive has explained that, with the request for a meeting of said monitoring commission, she wants to open a “serene” debate on the issue of military spending, since it is necessary to discuss with “serene” the PSOE’s claim to place military spending at 2% of GDP.
And it is that this measure means raising this section to 22,000 million euros, when the Ministry of Labor that he directs has a budget of 30,000 million and assumes the deployment of unemployment benefits and active labor insertion policies.
This morning, the president of the United We Can parliamentary group in Congress, Jaume Asens, has accused the PSOE of “disloyalty” with the forms used to take these 1,000 million for Defense, which he has described as a “decree for war” and a “bizum” for the arms industry approved “through the back door” in the Council of Ministers.
The last time that United We Can demanded the meeting of this monitoring commission was in October of last year when the minority partner appreciated “attempts to interfere” by the vice president, Nadia Calviño, in the powers of her counterpart and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz , facing the work to promote the new labor reform.
The tension in the coalition is intensifying due to the increase in defense spending, and it is already pouring rain, but neither of the two parties sees in this new conflict a threat of breaking up the Government. And in Moncloa, as usual, they rush to try to put out the new fire and redirect the discrepancies between the PSOE and United We Can towards other issues of consensus.
The spokeswoman for the Executive, the socialist Isabel Rodríguez, has thus framed in the normality of the operation of the coalition that the monitoring commission of the pact between the PSOE and United We Can meet: “That is what it is for.” And, what’s more, she has recalled that the last time this forum met between both parties, last October to address their discrepancies regarding the labor reform, the conclusion was that the coalition came out more cohesive. “Every time we have met we have come out reinforced in the coalition agreements”, Isabel Rodríguez highlighted.
“The Government values ??this meeting in the normality of a coalition government”, insisted the minister spokesperson, who in any case has highlighted “the value” of the social advances that are being approved in this legislature. “The coalition is not an end in itself,” Isabel Rodríguez has warned. The important thing, she has assured, is her management in the face of the succession of crises that she must face and all the achievements that she, in her opinion, is achieving. “The experience that we are giving to Spain, with a government made up of different political forces, capable of understanding each other to carry out agreements as important as the labor or pension reform, is worthwhile for the advancement of our country”, she highlighted. .
The Government spokeswoman has recognized, in any case, that the extraordinary credit of almost 1,000 million for the Ministry of Defense has not been the subject of a vote today in the Council of Ministers, because it has already been validated and without objections from the meeting last Thursday of the commission are undersecretaries and secretaries of state. Isabel Rodríguez has insisted on justifying it, in addition, to guarantee the security and defense of the country. “It is not convenient to abstract ourselves from the moment that the world and Spain are experiencing”, she has warned, after the Russian war in Ukraine, which has already lasted more than four months. “We are protecting ourselves from that war,” she has settled.
