Spain assumes the EU Presidency for the fifth time with the unknown of which government will conclude it

It is preceded by the clash between the Executive and the PP for the coordination of priorities

MADRID, 30 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Spain will assume the Presidency of the Council of the EU for the fifth time on July 1 with the question of whether the coalition government between the PSOE and Podemos, which has set the priorities for the semester, will be the one that completes it on December 31 or by On the contrary, there will be a new Executive resulting from the July 23 elections that will have to assume the task.

The Spanish Presidency takes place at a relevant time in the EU, since it will be the last complete one of the current legislature since in the next one, which will be held by Belgium, elections to the European Parliament are scheduled to be held from June 6 to 9.

It would be up to Spain to try to move forward with the legislative files that are still pending or at least make significant progress so that they can be closed before the appointment with the polls. Of the 350 that remain, Spain has focused its attention on about 120 of them.

The advance from December to July 23 of the general elections decided by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will now mark the semester, since there could be a replacement in the Moncloa Palace and the outgoing Executive could be in office for several weeks , depending on the clarity of the electoral result.

The Government has defended from the beginning that holding elections during a Presidency in office is not unusual and this does not have to affect its course.

Thus, the recent case of France in 2022 has been brought up, when Emmanuel Macron was re-elected in a double round and there were also women parliamentarians, and others have been mentioned in the past, such as Belgium, which in 2010 held the entire Presidency with an acting government, or like the Czech Republic, which in 2009 experienced a change in the leadership of the Executive.

The Government has been preparing the Presidency for a year and an entire calendar of ministerial sector councils spread throughout the Spanish geography with the autonomous communities has been agreed with the intention of bringing Europe closer to all citizens and transferring the diversity of the country to the Europeans, as explained by Sánchez during the presentation of the priorities for the semester on June 15.

From the PP it has been blamed in the months prior to the start of the Presidency that the Government has not informed the main opposition party of the preparations and priorities. In this sense, during a visit to Stockholm, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, came to make it ugly that he knew more about the Swedish Presidency - which will take over from Spain - than about the Spanish one.

Thus, Sánchez came to reduce the role reserved for Spain as the current Presidency by exposing the four major priorities that the current Government has set for itself: reindustrializing Europe and guaranteeing open strategic autonomy, advancing in the ecological transition and adaptation environmental protection, consolidation of the social pillar and strengthening the unity of the EU.

"The rotating presidency places Spain as a bridge-building actor to try to move forward with files that we do not impose from Spain but are already in Europe," he claimed, trying to clarify that the priority issues for the coming months have not been set by the Executive. Among those big pending issues are the Migration and Asylum Pact or the new EU tax rules.

The PP's Institutional Vice-Secretary, Esteban González Pons, has spoken along the same lines, acknowledging that since there has been a president of the European Council, the Presidency has "a minor role." "What the country that presides in turn does is coordinate the ambassadors and in decisions of the Council its main task is to promote issues on which it is important that an agreement be reached so that the EU continues to advance," he said.

With everything, from the PP they have tried to prevent the Government from making electoral use of the acts of the Presidency that will take place before 23J. In this sense, González Pons requested by letter to the Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, that the events that will take place between July 7 and 23 be transferred to Brussels or Luxembourg.

The minister rejected the request, which he called an attempt to "boycott" the EU Presidency and from his department the "popular" were accused of "politicizing" this matter, something never seen so far in the case of opposition parties in other EU countries, according to diplomatic sources.

In Moncloa they do not lose the battle on 23J, hence the fact that nobody wants to talk about how the eventual transfer of dossiers would be managed in the event of a victory for the PP. However, from Foreign Affairs they argue that the priorities are already agreed and therefore it would be strange to modify them, although they admit that a possible entry of Vox into the Executive could have a certain negative impact.

For now, the initial planned agenda has been modified as a result of the electoral advance. Thus, Sánchez will not go to the European Parliament on July 13 to present his priorities, but rather the appearance has been moved to September, while the visit of the College of Commissioners, scheduled for July 7, has been brought forward to the 3rd so that did not coincide with the first day of the electoral campaign.

Another appointment that Sánchez does not intend to ignore is the summit between the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which will be held on July 17 and 18 in Brussels, one of the great milestones of the Spanish semester. and that the Government hopes that it will serve to stage a greater rapprochement between both continents.

Currently, with 27 member states, the rotating Presidency is exercised every 13 and a half years, so Spain would not assume this responsibility again until 2037. However, the period could be increased if the entry of one of them materializes in the coming years. of the candidate countries for accession.

This will be the fifth time that Spain has held the Presidency of the Council of the EU since it entered the bloc in 1986, then made up of ten countries, along with Portugal. The first time was in 1989, just three years after accession, and the last time in 2010.

In 1989, with Felipe González at Moncloa, Spain took charge of the EU for the first time. During the Madrid Summit, the foundations of what would become the Economic and Monetary Union were laid, a step prior to the adoption of a common currency, and the idea of ​​economic and social cohesion was also raised, which would eventually give way to the Cohesion Funds.

In 1995, with José María Aznar already as president, Spain returned to the Presidency at a time when the European family received three new members: Austria, Finland and Sweden. It was under the Spanish leadership when it was decided that the single currency would be called the 'euro' and the so-called Barcelona Process was also launched, which ultimately led to the creation of the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM).

The history of the single currency is closely linked to Spain's history at the head of the bloc, since when the Presidency was assumed again on January 1, 2002, the euro came into force in a dozen countries. In addition, the largest expansion to date took place, with the entry of twelve new members.

If in the previous Presidency the Schengen Area had been launched with seven countries, including Spain, in 2002 the European arrest and surrender warrant, better known as a Eurowarrant, was incorporated.

Spain was at the forefront of the bloc, then made up of 27 countries including the United Kingdom, in 2010, in a semester that was marked by economic recovery after the financial crisis and the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.