PSOE points out that the delegation that evaluates European funds in Spain is made up of mostly conservative MEPs

He stresses that they are not technicians from the European Commission and avoids commenting on the suspicions of the head of the delegation, the German Mónika Hohlmeier

MADRID, 20 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister of Education and PSOE Spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, wanted to point out today that the European delegation that is arriving in Spain today to control the use of European funds by the Spanish Government is made up of MEPs, not Commission technicians, who are mostly "conservatives". But she has not wanted to assess the suspicions of the president of the EP budgetary control Commission, the German Mónika Hohlmeier, has made on some occasion about the Spanish management of European funds.

This was stated by the socialist spokeswoman during a press conference on Ferraz street, where journalists asked her about the surprise shown by Vice President Nadia Calviño that this delegation was made up mostly of PP and Vox MEPs and if he believed that the intention was to overshadow the arrival of these funds.

Pilar Alegría has explained that the Government is going to work with absolute normality, transparency to explain what it is doing in deploying this money. And she has also shown her "pride" because Spain is the country, she recalled, where the deployment of European funds is most advanced. In fact, she has attributed to "holding" this first position the fact that the aforementioned visit has been organized.

Thus, he recalled that at the moment there is a deployment of 23,300 million euros of these funds between the CCAA and City Councils, of the 31,000 million that Spain has already received, pointing out that the third disbursement of 6,000 million is already going to be made.

Some amounts that in his opinion, "would not have been possible if the PP had been treated." Having said this, he has accused the 'popular' of "putting sticks in the wheel so that these funds do not arrive" and has attributed the reception of these funds to the work of the President of the Government, pointing out that without them there would be no talk of growth of GDP of 5.5 percent.

But when reminding her that the quota of PSOE MEPs arriving in Spain today is larger than that of the PP --since there are two from the PSOE, two from Ciudadanos, one from Catalonia en Común, another from the PP and another from VOX-- He has called for "recounting" and verifying that "there is a fairly considerable number of conservative forces" with "PP and VOX especially".

In fact, he wanted to make it clear that this visit is from members of the Commission, who are MEPs from different political parties and not members of the European Commission.

In any case, Pilar Alegría did not want to comment on the statements made by the German MEP Mónika Hohlmeier, president of the Committee on Budgetary Control of the European Parliament and the EPP, about her skepticism with the use of European funds in Spain.

Pilar Alegría has limited herself to specifying that the MEP has been able to listen to the "multiple manifestations" that the president of the European PP and also of the Commission, Úrsula Von der Leyen, has always conveyed about the good management that Spain is making of the management of European funds.

The German has recently expressed concern about the "lack of transparency" in the use that states are making of European money. Along with her, who is leading the delegation that is visiting Spain today, is a group of MEPs, mostly Spanish: Isabel Benjumea (PP), Isabel García Muñoz and Eider Gardiazabal (PSOE), Eva María Poptcheva and Susana Solís (Cs), Ernest Urtasun (En Comú Podem) and Jorge Buxadé (Vox).

The MEPs are scheduled to meet with the First Vice President and Minister for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño; the Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, and the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations, José Luis Escrivá, as well as regional councilors from Castilla-La Mancha, Madrid, Extremadura, Andalusia and Aragon. They will also meet with representatives of employers and unions, the digital industry, consultancy and investigative journalists.

At the proposal of the Spanish Government, they will also visit a project financed by the National Recovery Plan, the National Center for Neurotechnology.

"As representatives of the EU budgetary control authority, we want to see with our own eyes what is being done at the national level to protect the financial interests of the EU with this new financial instrument," said the head of the delegation, Monika Hohlmeier, before the visit.

The Committee on Budgetary Control, made up of 30 MEPs, is one of the 20 permanent committees of the European Parliament and its job is to monitor how the budget of the European Union has been spent and to formulate proposals to improve its management.