The pulse at Government of Pedro Sanchez Already the amnesty law agreed by the PSOE with ERC and Junts has focused a harsh debate in the European Parliamentwhich has oscillated between accusations of “betrayal” by the conservative bench of the Spanish Executive and criticism from the left of the PP for not accepting the electoral result of last July 23, and in which the commissioner of justice, Didier Reyndersrecalled that the European Commission will analyze the wording of the future norm in a “careful, independent and objective” manner, “in contact with the Spanish authorities,” and that the exercise will conclude “once there is a final text approved by parliament.” ;.
Despite the intervention of some MEPs from other countries, particularly mobilized by the right and the extreme right, the debate entitled “Threat to the rule of law as a consequence of the Government agreement in Spain” -promoted by PP with the support of Cs and Vox– has been profoundly Spanish and has transferred the political confrontation that is being experienced at the national level to the hemicycle of the European Parliament. A discussion that has not materialized in no kind of political resolutionbut that increases the pressure on Commissioner Reynders who has attended the scuffle impassively.
“The Commission is aware of the agreement between two political parties at the inauguration of the new Spanish Government. “We know that this agreement allows for an amnesty and the creation of special commissions in Parliament,” explained Reynders during a long initial intervention in which he detailed in detail the content of the latest report on the rule of law 2023 in Spain, which demands, for example, the urgent renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), before entering into the question of amnesty.
The Belgian liberal recalled that he wrote a letter to two acting ministers asking for explanations about the new law. He explained that Minister Félix Bolaños responded by offering his “availability for dialogue.” -which the Secretary of State has reiterated during the debate Angeles Moreno– and he mentioned that there have been “many complaints” of citizens that it has received, which will be reflected in the report on the rule of law of 2024, although it has made it clear that the situation in Catalonia continues to be an internal issue of Spain that must be resolved “according to the Spanish constitutional order.”
Offensive of the PP, Cs and Vox
Faced with the caution of the European Commission, the interventions, particularly from the right and the extreme right, have been extremely harsh. The president of the EPP, Manfred Weber, has expressed his group’s concern about what he considers “deterioration, not to say abolition, of the rule of law in Spain” and has warned that “Sánchez will go down in history as the one who violated the rule of law and Feijóo as the one who saved her.”
On behalf of the liberals, the first to intervene was the leader of the liberals, the leader of Cs, Adrian Vazquez, which has described the law as “breaching the rule of law” and to be a “tailor-made” law. and be written by those who will benefit from it. Even more critical has been the Vox MEP, Jorge Buxade, which has described the law as a “coup d’état” and has accused Sánchez of being a “narcissist, liar and with a pathological need for power.”
Faced with the tone of these groups, they have defended the social democratic law and the left that has accused the PP of not accepting the electoral results of 23J and of not opting for the path of reconciliation. “We are going to be the party that recovers coexistence between Catalans and between Catalans and the rest of Spain. I recommend that you read Antonio Machado: by walking you make a path and when you look back across it you see the path that you will never have to tread again,” the president of the social democrats responded, Iratxe García, to Weber. “It will be demonstrated that it does not go against either the Spanish Constitution or the values of the EU,” he stated. Jordi Solé.
Puigdemont’s reaction
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Although Carles Puigdemont He has not spoken during the debate, which lasted just over an hour, but he has left his opinion in the corridors of the chamber and on the social network X. The former president has blurted out that the debate has been “a serious erosion of credibility of the European institutions” because the PP and Cs “in their populist drift” They drag the Commission and the European Parliament “into an unusual situation, in which an investiture pact signed by two parties becomes a European issue.” In the same note, he has lamented the role of Weber “transformed into an ordinary politician of the Spanish PP, one of those who never feel uncomfortable sharing demonstrations with fascists and Nazis, of making lies an argument and not minimally contrasting the data.” . “The European PP is abandoning the central lane that Christian democracy opened one day, and is adopting the criteria and standards of its Spanish subsidiary, heir to Francoism,” he has settled.
Sources from the PSOE have defended, for their part, that the PP “has failed in its attempt to get the European Commission to take a position against the proposed amnesty law,” since Reynders has stressed that it is an “internal issue.” ;. “The PP has demonstrated at European headquarters that it is indistinguishable from Vox: they use the same harsh tone and the same lies. Their objective is to harm the progressive Government, but what they do is harm the image of Spain,” they added, stressing that “the rule of law is at the center of the Government’s political action.”