Sánchez and Biden greet each other briefly at the European Council

taketonews

  • The two leaders they shake hands and spend a few seconds with Charles Michel and the Prime Ministers of Cyprus, Slovakia, Sweden and the Czech Republic

  • Sánchez and Biden met in the morning at the NATO summit, also in Brussels. the american leader will visit Spain in June

This time Moncloa did not repeat the mistake of the past. The one he committed almost a year ago, when he anticipated a meeting between Pedro Sánchez and the US president, Joe Biden, at the NATO summit in Brussels, and that was barely a walk together of less than a minute. This Thursday, the two leaders met again before the cameras very briefly, but the socialist team did not advance anything to the media.

The photojournalists were able to pick up the brief greeting from Sánchez and Biden in the afternoon, in the Justus Lipsius building in the community capital, the one that hosts the European Council, although both had coincided in the morning at the extraordinary summit of the Alliance, also in Brussels. The US president, in fact, linked three appointments: that of the Atlantic Alliance, that of the G7 —of which Spain is not a part— and that of the Council, to which he arrived after seven in the afternoon. In the images prior to Biden’s meeting with the leaders of the Twenty-seven, it was when the cameras captured the brief meeting with Sánchez.

Biden entered the Council room and greeted the Heads of State and Government, alone or in a group. Sánchez was already at his table, the one he occupies at the summit and, seeing the US president, he approached the small group that had formed around him. Biden shook his hand and the conversation continued. In addition to Sánchez, the president of the European Council, the Belgian Charles Michaeland the prime ministers of the Czech Republic, petr fiala; Sweden, Magdalena Anderson; Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiadesand Slovakia, Edward Heger. Then the French and current president of the EU, Emmanuel Macron, joined.

There is no date yet for a bilateral meeting between the two presidents, although in Moncloa they strive to repeat that relations with the US are good and “fluid”

From the Spanish delegation they did not offer details of the informal conversation with Biden, because the leaders then met with him alone and without cell phones. The contact, in any case, was not planned. In the morning, at NATO, the two leaders were in the family photo (not together, by protocol) and shared the subsequent summit behind closed doors. The US president will visit Spain for the first time at the end of June, at the summit of the Alliance which will be organized in Madrid.

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Last year, Moncloa had sold the meeting of Sánchez and Biden with great fanfare in advance, which in the end was reduced to a very short walk between the two, which was what was really agreed by the teams of both. But the feeling of ridicule that spread, difficult to amend by the Executive, served as a lesson for the future. And it was one of the reasons that explained the fall of Sánchez’s chief of staff, Iván Redondo. Since then, the question of when there will be a meeting with the US leader has been a recurring one. In the Executive they insist that relations with the US are optimal, “permanent” and “fluid” at all levels, and that there is no problem between the two countries. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, last summer, and now the war in Ukraine, affect, they have only strengthened the links between Madrid and Washington, between the EU and the Atlantic Alliance.

In the morning meeting, Sánchez did not hold a bilateral meeting with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoganbut they did see each other, “they walked and chatted together” from the family photo to the meeting of the Atlantic Council. Both spoke about the situation in Ukraine. The socialist leader told him that he values ​​”very positively his mediation efforts to end the war”, according to Moncloa sources. Sánchez also had a meeting with the Rotating President of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Šefik Džaferović.



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