Pedro Sánchez will not go to the Eurochamber in September to present the Spanish presidency of the European Union (EU) which he assumed on July 1 and which ends on December 31.
According to La Vanguardia, the acting president of the Spanish Government has decided to stop the presentation of the priorities of the Spanish mandate “with respect” to the investiture process initiated by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, after receiving last week the order of the King.
In addition to overturning Moncloa’s plans for the rotating presidency, the postponement will have another consequence. Together, and particularly Carles Puigdemont’s entourage, they hoped that the visit of the acting president of the Spanish Government to the Eurochamber would lead to a gesture of rapprochement between Sánchez and the former president of the Generalitat. Now this situation will be possible.
This is the second alteration of the external calendar of the Executive after the resignation of the socialist leader to intervene on the date originally planned – July 13 – so as not to coincide with the final stretch of the electoral campaign for the general elections held on 23-J.
That time it was the European People’s Party (EPP) who got ahead of the Government in asking for a two-month postponement. And, as defended by its leader, Manfred Weber, the move was made with the aim of enabling “the newly elected prime minister” to present the Council’s priorities “aside from the national electoral battles” .
The request was accepted by both the PSOE and the PP. The popular people, in fact, created a working group with former ministers and foreign policy experts and the optimism declared in Génova was evident after the numerous polls that gave Feijóo a large majority capable of ousting Sánchez de la Moncloa.
The popular people fixed the signature of a European migration pact as some of the master lines of the hypothetical interim presidency of the EU of Feijóo. And they even approved the week of September 14 to fit the presentation of the project due to the fact that they understood that “the blue tsunami” that the leaders of Genoa predicted at the polls would allow an express investiture of the national leader.
But the truth is that the PP is still far from having the necessary support for Feijóo to be invested as President of the Government and, out of “respect” for the process, it was Sánchez himself who decided to once again resign from speaking before the Eurochamber.
If to this is added the refusal shown by the Basque Nationalist Party, Esquerra Republicana and Junts to support the PP, everything points to the fact that the election of the next president of the Spanish Government will be extended beyond October 5, when the informal summit of leaders of the European Union is scheduled to be held in Grenada, in which not only the twenty-seven member states of the European Union will participate, but also other countries, such as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, candidates to enter the community alliance.
Although there are precedents for holding national elections to coincide with the Council’s rotating presidency, none of the recent documented cases occurred just three weeks before taking the reins of the EU, as was the case of Spain with the July 23 elections.
On the other hand, the only precedent for a change of head of government through elections in the middle of the European presidency dates back to Italy in 1996.
