Echenique criticizes the PSOE for the credit of 1,000 million for Defense: "This is shoveling votes to the right"

MADRID, 5 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The spokesman for United We Can in Congress, Pablo Echenique, has criticized the decision of the socialist wing of the Executive to approve this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers a credit of 1,000 million euros for Defense.

"This is giving votes to the right and the extreme right", he stressed in a comment on Twitter, thus evidencing the discomfort of the purple formation due to this increase in financing to the military plot.

This credit, according to Moncloa sources, is consigned to advance in the fulfillment of the commitments acquired with NATO and is approved charged to the contingency fund, so it does not require the approval of Congress. In addition, the aforementioned sources have assured that United We Can was aware of the measure.

Yesterday, the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, was very critical of her coalition partner and said, bluntly, that the approval of those additional 1,000 million for Defense was not agreed upon and that "forms" in politics are important " , especially when it affects an aspect as sensitive as this area.

Therefore, he demanded that the decisions be made "properly", with respect for the allies and the Cortes Generales themselves, given that the opposition also has the right to know those plans.

"The agreement to raise a further billion euros for Defense has nothing to do, and I'm sorry, with the workload (of Navantia) for my region of Ferrol, or Cádiz, and I'm sorry," he stressed. Díaz in clear reference to the head of Defense, Margarita Robles, who had previously urged the leader of Podemos, Ione Belarra, to ask the vice president to see if she says in Ferrol that they stop building the frigates there.

The tension between the coalition partners has escalated after the NATO Summit and the commitment to raise the military budget to 2% of GDP, assumed by the PSOE and which United We Can reject.

Yesterday, the confederal parliamentary group confirmed that it will vote against the agreement reached with the United States to increase the number of North American destroyers at the Rota base (Cádiz) from four to six when it reaches Congress.

Along these lines, Ione Belarra commented on the General Budgets, and in allusion to his coalition partner, that among the "urgencies" of the country does not include "doubling military spending", which in his opinion are already at "record" levels, because "Spain is not at war" but to protect itself from the socioeconomic effects of the conflict in Ukraine.

He also argued that citizens "do not need" to buy "bombs or fighter planes" at the "demand of a foreign power," referring to the United States.