Pedro Sánchez set his position on the conflict between Israel and Hamas on Saturday, with a condemnation of the terrorist attacks of this organization and, at the same time, the requirement that the right to defend the Jewish State does not exceed international humanitarian law in Gaza And with the recognition of the two states, Israel and Palestine, as the only formula to make progress in resolving this conflict. A position, as they emphasized in Moncloa, aligned in all its terms with that made official by the European Council yesterday regarding the situation in the Middle East.
In this context, the acting president of the Spanish Government and leader of the PSOE will take a short break today in the negotiations with which he is trying to articulate a new parliamentary majority for investiture and the legislature to travel to Tirana, the capital of Albania, where he will participate in a summit of European leaders on the Western Balkans, in which the situation of the clash between Israel and Hamas will also be addressed.
La Moncloa justify the relevance of Sánchez’s presence this Monday at the Tirana summit, where he will meet with some of the main leaders of the EU and with the leadership of the community club, especially before the meeting of the European Council that will be held tomorrow, for videoconference, to assess the conflict in the Middle East.
Sánchez’s unexpected trip today to the capital of Albania forces the postponement until Tuesday of the meeting he had planned in Ferraz with the members of the PSOE negotiating commission in the investiture process, in order to start a phase of intensification of conversations with the representatives of the parliamentary groups.
The Tirana summit is part of the so-called Berlin process, which Moncloa points out was an initiative of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2014, assumed in turn by the European Commission, with the aim of ensuring the ‘balance in the Balkans in the long term, as well as to transform the region in accordance with the European perspective by promoting cooperation, good neighborliness and connectivity, and with an eye on its future integration into the EU.
Sánchez, according to sources from La Moncloa, was invited to participate in this meeting both because of the fact that Spain holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU and because of the importance given to the recent summit of European leaders held in Granada, where the foundations were laid for the future expansion of the community club in countries such as those in the Balkan region.
Both this process and the complex international scenario, in which the conflict between Israel and Hamas is added to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, led Sánchez to accept the invitation to participate in the Tirana summit.
For now, the presence of the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the Presidents of the Council and the European Commission, Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen, is also confirmed. Other European partners, such as France, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Poland and Slovenia, will also be represented at the meeting, which will include the countries of the Western Balkans – Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia North–, together with Kosovo and the United Kingdom.
