If, as expected, Feijóo fails in the investiture, Sánchez will attend the Granada summit with fifty European leaders as acting president
He has not yet confirmed whether he will attend to explain his presidency priorities to the European Parliament, knowledgeable sources confirm.
If Alberto Núñez Feijóo manages to be sworn in as president next September 27, the following week he should already receive fifty European heads of state or government in Granada. The popular leader, who does not speak English and is aware of his gaps in international politics, will have to attend the leaders of the 27 countries of the Union (informal meeting of the Council) and the 44 of the European Political Community (who will also attend the Spanish city in his annual appointment), as well as invited countries. His team, recently arrived and with a transfer of portfolios recently made or in process, should accelerate to the maximum to get the most out of the international meeting.
If, on the contrary, and as is more likely, the PP candidate does not get enough support, it will be a Pedro Sánchez in functions who, as President of the Council of the EU, will take a Juicy photo of a statesman with the highest dignitaries Europeans with the Alhambra in the background. A reissue of the image success of the NATO summit that could be used politically if there is finally a repetition of the elections in January.
Francina Armengol, president of Congress, decided this Wednesday to give Feijóo 34 days to negotiate and try to get the votes for the investiture, whose first vote will be on September 26. that has cleared to Sánchez a month of September loaded with international appointments of the highest relevance. A hectic agenda that will be better carried out without the requirement of having to prepare an investiture debate. And that it will show an acting president and eventual candidate who converses with international leaders while Feijóo “beggars” supports that he does not have and he continually collides with the wall of his parliamentary solitude, they say from Moncloa.
The first of the appointments is the meeting of the industrialized countries of the G20, which will be held on September 9 and 10 in New Delhi (India). The second is the super-summit of the 27 countries of the European Union with the 33 of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which will take place in Santiago de Compostela on the 15th and 16th of this month. End the month with a week of General Assembly in New York. The general debate of global leaders begins on September 19 and ends on September 23, just three days before the first investiture vote.
The acting president should also attend European Parliament on September 12, but you haven’t RSVPed yet, according to sources familiar with both the EU and the government. It is a formal presentation before the European legislators of the priorities that Spain has for these six months of presidency of the Council of the EU. Something that all the rotating presidents of the EU do at the beginning of their term, and that is now two and a half months late. The Government asked Brussels to postpone the appointment at the beginning of the presidency, because it coincided with the electoral campaign. Parliament has already reserved a three-hour slot in plenary to be held that day in Strasbourg, and is waiting for Moncloa to redo the agenda in the event that Sánchez finally declines to speak before the 755 MEPs and the president of the Commission , Ursula von der Leyen.
The electoral advance decided by Pedro Sánchez by surprise after the crash in the regional and local elections in May disrupted the agenda of the Spanish presidency. From the Government they insisted then that the bulk of the tasks were not going to be affected, among other things because it is the diplomats of the permanent representation in Brussels and the ministries that carry out the preparations for the dozens of appointments throughout Spain that involves the semester. The opposition has criticized, however, the loss of political momentum that supposes that the president is in office or campaigning in full presidency. Even in the optimistic scenario that Sánchez could be sworn in at the end of October or beginning of November, the bulk of the semester, which ends in December, will have passed in the middle of the political instability of these months.
There is an unwritten rule in Brussels that says that the president of the Council of the EU must refrain from advancing its interests, those of the national agenda, during their semester. However, in order to obtain the favorable vote of Junts for Francina Armengol for the presidency of Congress, the Government has formally requested that the EU include the inclusion of Catalan, Basque and Galician as official languages of the Union on the European agenda. In fact, he has asked himself. The Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, sent a letter “For the Presidency of the Council of the European Union”, that is, to Pedro Sánchez himself, in which he requested that the regulation of the 27 be modified to include these three languages . And he was in a hurry: the text requested that the procedures begin at the next General Affairs Council, on September 17. The independentistas stressed that it was time to make that request precisely because Sánchez presides over the Council. Carlos Puigdemont He says that he does not trust Sánchez and wants “advance payments & rdquor;. With this urgent letter, the negotiation was unblocked and the PSOE and Sumar gained control of the Congress table.