A delegation of the European Parliament is in Spain to learn about its equality policies. What was initially going to be a mission to analyze the advances in the fight against sexist violence, care policies and anti-trafficking has become a monograph on the controversy of the ‘only yes is yes‘ and in object of division and disagreement in the group of MEPs.
Spain was chosen for this analysis, together with Sweden, for its legislation and its avant-garde policies against gender violence. But the “unwanted effects” of the organic law for the comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom have slipped into the visit and have monopolized the agenda of the delegation of MEPs from the Commission on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality of the EU Parliament, something that has been pursued by the right-wing and that has outraged the left, as reported by eye sources to this medium.
“They are distorting the object of the mission. There are representatives of the right-wing parties that are trying to deal exclusively with the effects of the law of the only yes is yes, that they only talk about it. We have come to learn and inform ourselves, not to value anything. This is not Europe coming to Spain to ask that anything be corrected, but some representatives of the Equality Commission coming to learn first-hand about the policies and legal advances that can help us in the European Parliament”, they indicate to El Periódico de España, from the Prensa Ibérica group, progressive sources from the European Parliament.
In the opposite position, the European People’s Party. According to their sources, the problems with the reviews of sentences for sexual offenders and the need to change the Criminal Code “has come up in all the meetings” held during the visit: “It is clear that we have taught Europe the model of what should never be done. (…) In Europe we are going to press as hard as possible we can so that amend the mistake as soon as possible”.
From the left-wing groups in the European Parliament they insist that the delegation is not here to meddle “in any domestic policy” and denounce that the instrumentalizing attitude of the right is being “disloyal to the country’s agendain view of the Spanish presidency of the EU, as well as with Spanish women and feminism, who are proud that Spain is at the forefront” of equality.
The European Parliament, in the words of a source from the institution, specifies that the delegation has traveled to Spain “to learn about the development of equality policies” and that the main reason for the visit is not the law of only yes is yes . The country was proposed as a destination for this mission one day before that law came into force.
Meetings with Llop and Montero
The delegation, which began working on the ground on Monday, is made up of nine MEPs: three from the European People’s Party (EPP), two from the group of Socialists and Democrats, one from Renew (liberals, specifically a representative of Cs), one from Los Verdes, another from the Left Group (Podemos) and the last from the Conservatives (Vox). The head is the Polish Elżbieta Katarzyna Łukacijewska, from the PPE.
He sexual consentthe fight against human trafficking, the fight against gender violence and care were the issues that they wanted to analyze on this trip.
On Monday, the MEPs met with the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop; the Senate Equality Commission and women’s organizations and trade unions. On Tuesday the meetings with civil society associations continued; with jurists; with the Equality Commission of the Congress; with the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero; and with the delegated prosecutor of the Violence against Women room, Teresa Peramato. This Wednesday, the mission will conclude with a meeting with the Observatory against domestic and gender violence of the General Council of the Judiciary.
Political and civil society representatives who have participated in some of these meetings have acknowledged to this newspaper that sexual violence has dominated a large part of the meetings and that has overshadowed important issues like care.
Socialist sources regret that a “very specific” matter has been magnified in an interested way, while from the PP they defend that the MEPs “have seen where it is the controversy“and they have made it clear that they have received many communications from citizens and associations about the law of only yes is yes and also about the trans law.
For the PSOE, it is “unpresentable” that the popular have distorted “such an important forum for exchange” to say that “this law brings violators to the streets and that nothing is being done to stop it”: “The objective is to transfer an image negative of the public policy of equality in our country, when what actually happens is that Spain is recognized by countries all over the world precisely in this matter.It is to take to the extreme the strategy that Casado began and continued by Feijóo de speak ill of Spain in Europe”, the sources highlight.
PSOE-PP struggle on a European scale
Different sources present at the meeting of the European delegation with representatives of the Equality Commission of the Congress tell this newspaper that the former vice president Carmen Calvo, now president of that body of the Lower House, has stressed that they should not take place meddling in Spanish politics.
But the popular do not agree and believe that this trip should serve as pressure element to change the law of comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom.
The delegation will prepare a consensual report of its conclusions, but before that, the MEP head of the mission will give some statements on behalf of the delegation on Wednesday. Progressive MEPs have already asked you to act on behalf of all and not from his party.
While waiting to know in which direction it will rule, it is clear that the political division around the organic law of comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom, so present in Spain, has also infected the mission of the European Parliament.