PSOE and ERC suspend meetings with international verifiers until after the Catalan and European ones

PSOE and ERC have decided to temporarily suspend meetings between parties in which an international verifier participates until the next Basque, Catalan and European electoral calls pass.

This was announced by both parties this Friday in a joint statement, in which they point out that PSOE and ERC have met discreetly and periodically "to advance the political solution since the investiture agreement" signed last fall.

In addition, they have specified that this space "has an international mechanism that has the functions of accompanying, verifying and monitoring the entire negotiation process", of which the details are not known so far.

Due to the call for elections to the Parliament of Catalonia, as indicated, they have decided to suspend the meetings between PSOE and ERC during this period, as specified by socialist sources.

"The agreement signed between both parties also foresees that this space will be used to prepare the meetings of the Dialogue Table between governments. Due to the call for elections to the Parliament of Catalonia, it has been decided to suspend the public meeting of the Table scheduled for this quarter , as has been done in previous electoral contests," they further indicate in the statement.

In any case, they assure that all the actors involved "are committed to continuous dialogue and negotiation as a way to find a political solution."

Although the details of these meetings are not known, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, stated on December 4 that the verifier participating in the meetings between PSOE and ERC, as a result of the investiture agreement sealed between both parties, was going to be different. to the one who exercises that function with Junts, the Salvadoran diplomat Francisco Galindo.

Galindo has already participated in several meetings in Switzerland between the PSOE and those of Carles Puigdemont in recent months, but in the case of ERC, the identity of this mediator is still not known and until now it had not been confirmed that these meetings had taken place. carried out.

The PSOE has not given more details about these meetings, which people have participated, where they have taken place or how many have taken place and has limited itself to pointing out that they are "discreet" meetings.

FOUR MEETINGS WITH JUNTS

The socialists also do not clarify what is going to happen with the meetings between PSOE and Junts during these months in which three calls for elections in a row will be chained, whether they will continue or be temporarily suspended like those of ERC. In any case, they point out that the meetings with each of the parties have their particularities.

The last meeting in Switzerland between the PSOE and Junts - the fourth to be held in this format - was made public last Saturday, March 16, according to both groups.

In that meeting they analyzed the approval of the Amnesty Law in the Congress of Deputies a few days before, a procedure that, according to what they indicated, would allow a phase of the negotiation to be launched with the activation of two new work teams: one on the deficits and limitations of self-government and another on the national recognition of Catalonia. These would be added to those that already exist in the field of the Catalan language and the law on the delegation of powers in immigration.