The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, started his second official trip to Brussels yesterday, where two days of meetings with four European commissioners awaited him, in addition to a conference at the European Parliament, an agenda very similar to the one their predecessors had before the process destroyed the privileged dialogue that Catalonia has traditionally maintained with the institutions of the European Union. It is the main message that Aragonès highlighted from his visit to the community capital, from where he did not lose sight of the movements around the proposed Amnesty law.
The numerous agenda of meetings for this visit reflects the “culmination” of the “recovery of the full interlocution of the Generalitat with the European Commission that we started under my presidency”, emphasized the president, after meeting with the commissioner European Minister of Economy, Paolo Gentiloni accompanied by the Minister of Finance, Natàlia Mas.
In the afternoon, Aragonès and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Meritxell, met with the vice-president of the Commission and responsible for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Šuica, as well as with the commissioner responsible for Cohesion, Elisa Ferreira. Today, the executive vice-president of the institution, Maros Šef?ovi?, awaits them.
“The political prevention that was possible before has now disappeared. There is a direct and very positive dialogue with the Commission”, celebrate Government sources, who recall that the normalization of contacts with Brussels was one of the objectives that Aragonès set when he arrived at the Palau de la Generalitat almost three years ago . Then it was found that the doors of the European Commission were closed and barred to the Catalan authorities since 2015, when the pro-independence process began to advance boxes in its pulse in the State.
In total, the Generalitat brings to 14 the “high-level” meetings held with 10 members of the European Commission since the beginning of Aragonès’ mandate. The visit of the President of the Community Executive, Ursula von der Leyen, to Barcelona in May 2022 to receive an award from the Economic Circle led to a protocol meeting, in the presence of President Pedro Sánchez, who made it clear that the thaw between Brussels and the Generalitat had begun and had Moncloa’s approval. Two months later, the vice-president of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas, a member of the European People’s Party and a person very close to the PP, visited Barcelona and went through the gates of the Palau to meet with the president and leader of ERC. In October of that year, it was Aragonès himself who went to Brussels. The doors of the Berlaymont, the seat of the community executive, were opened after seven years for the president of the Generalitat. Also among councilors there have been several meetings with commissioners.
“Today Catalonia is once again present at the European Commission and therefore the interests of its citizens are well represented”, emphasized Aragonès in statements to the press on the sidelines of his visit. “Today we once again demonstrate the capacity of the Government of the Generalitat to recover the maximum dialogue with the European institutions” and to exercise “the will of Catalonia to get involved and contribute” to the European debates, responded Councilor Serret, part of the group who settled with Carles Puigdemont in Brussels. Serret, as the Government’s delegate to the EU between 2018 and 2021, the year in which she returned to Spain to face her judicial situation, personally experienced the seven-year drought of institutional contacts.
Aragonés communicated several messages to the European authorities. On the one hand, he defended the attractiveness of different industrial projects in Catalonia for the Next Generation EU funds, but he also conveyed complaints about their distribution in Spain. “When they are managed with competitive calls, in which what is highlighted is capacity and talent, we have good results”, while “when there are political decisions, we find a recentralization of funds that does not help that they can develop fully”, he criticized.
It is a common lament of the European regions, whose role in this important funding item is much smaller than in the case of other community funds, such as cohesion aid. However, for the Minister of Economy and Finance, “this is not the case in other European territories”. Aragonès also spoke with Gentiloni about the new tax rules and regretted that they do not take into account situations like those in Catalonia, regions with broad powers and an obligation to provide services to citizens. “It is essential that this multi-level governance is taken into account”, he claimed.
In addition to meeting with Šef?ovi?, Aragonès will participate today in a conference on the right to self-determination in which the Basque president, Íñigo Urkullu, and the president of the Executive Council of Corsica, Gilles Simeoni, will also take part. The aim is to promote an initiative for the EU to adopt legislation that recognizes this right.
Although Aragonès will visit the Eurochamber, no meeting with Puigdemont is planned. The intense schedule of meetings has made it impossible, justify Government sources.
