2023-04-28 15:52:34
It is a complete denial and it has also been withering: the son of the Spanish Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, does not work on the Doñana file and, therefore, there is no conflict of interest in this case despite the fact that he is employed by the General Directorate for the Environment. This is how categorically the European Commission has responded to the latest attack against the Community Executive by a PP outraged by the repeated warnings of the European institution against the proposal for an Andalusian law to regularize illegal irrigation in the surroundings of the natural park. These types of official denials are very unusual, both for their tone and for the very fact of being issued. And they constitute a sign of the growing resentment and concern in Brussels in the face of political attacks against a European institution that few expected could come from a party from a country with proven democratic credibility such as Spain, nor from an internationally respected political group such as the Partido European People’s Party (EPP). “This is textbook anti-Europeanism”, warn with astonishment as well as concern those who thought they had already seen it all in the capital of the EU.
“Given the accusations against a Commission worker, we indicated that, in line with our procedures, the worker in question had revealed his personal situation in a ‘conflict of interest declaration’, indicated a spokesman for the European Executive in reference to Luis Planas Herrera. The son of the Spanish Minister of Agriculture is an assistant in Brussels to the Commission’s Director General for the Environment, Florika Fink-Hooijer, who is following the Doñana file and has issued repeated warnings to Spain to comply with the ruling on the park of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) of 2021.
On Thursday, the Councilor for the Presidency of the Board, Antonio Sanz, affirmed that the criticism of the Environment Commissioner – under whom Fink-Hooijer works -, Virginijus Sinkevičius, of the bill is explained because it is the son of Minister Planas who “Does the papers and answers” on your behalf. “Man, green and with handles! Everything is united,” Sanz ironized.
Planas son’s tasks “take into account” his situation “to avoid any current or potential conflict of interest. We can confirm that he has not been involved in the Doñana issue ”, settles the official response of the Commission, unusual for how fast and forceful he has been.
Minister Planas has responded to the controversy, referring in an interview on TVE to the insinuations of the Minister of the Presidency of the Board as “baseness”. “Sometimes politics has moments of immense baseness, and this is one of them. That the ‘number two’ of the Andalusian Government, with absolute ignorance, knowing full well that he is lying, was capable of messing with a person who cannot defend himself because he has been a European civil servant by opposition for eight years (…) and who is a An absolutely upright person who has nothing to do with the file shows that the PP is desperate and obviously there are times when personal arguments are used that seem to me to make no sense”. Before, Luis Planas has emphasized that “the proposal of PP and Vox is an illegal proposal, it goes against the sentence and the framework directive on Water and Habitat and obviously against the position of the European Commission and is even illegal from the point of view from a Spanish constitutional point of view, because it assumes jurisdiction over water that belongs to the State and not to the autonomous community (…) . I believe that he is a real nonsense, I have qualified him on more than one occasion, and what the Andalusian Government should do is think twice, take a step back and withdraw it ”.
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It is also the third time in three days that the Commission has to come out to defend itself against the attacks of European and Spanish conservatives. Shortly after EPP leader Manfred Weber on Wednesday accused Sinkevičius of wearing a “red shirt” to “campaign for [Pedro] Sánchez”, the commissioner himself replied on social networks, in another unusual gesture, that “the Commission acts as an impartial guardian of the Treaties and the implementation of the decisions of the CJEU [Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea] It’s a priority.” In addition, he added, “Doñana is important for Spain and for the European Union.” Just 24 hours later, the spokesman for the Commission, Eric Mamer, came out assuring that the president of the institution, Ursula von der Leyen, from the same political family as Weber, but far removed from the path that he has taken in recent years. In recent times, “he has confidence in all his commissioners.” A few neutral words, but for those who know how to read between the lines in a poker-faced Brussels, they are sufficient proof of the weariness and anger that this dispute is causing.
This “furious attack” is unusual and “totally irresponsible”, warns the Galician MEP Ana Miranda (BNG), who does not hide her astonishment despite saying she is used to the practices of the PP: she is vice-president of the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament chaired by the popular Dolors Montserrat, under constant accusations of manipulating the chamber for the interests of the PP and where Doñana has been the subject of discussion for several legislatures, he recalls. This case “demonstrates a behavior that the owners of the European institutions believe,” laments the parliamentarian affiliated with Los Verdes.
The European Commission is struggling to repel political attacks for its actions as “guardian of the treaties.” But these usually come from countries with governments whose democratic credentials are questioned, such as that of the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, whose diatribes against the von der Leyen team are already legendary. What Brussels did not expect was the attack against its commissioners, workers and even the institution itself that the PPE, the majority in the Eurochamber, has undertaken in a coordinated manner, along with the Spanish PP.
A game that can be dangerous both for the credibility of the institutions and for an EPP that plays with fire, also warn MEPs such as the socialist Javi López, for whom the limits of the politically admissible debate are being exceeded.
“I’ve been here for a decade and I hadn’t seen anything like it since Spain,” says López. “The only ones who have made this type of attack on the European Commission, institutional attacks and their officials, accusing them of politicization, are Europhobic and anti-system parties. Orbán and the Polish government do these things, no one else. This places the Spanish PP outside the European discussion perimeter ”, he adds. And he warns that it can bring consequences, because the fight between the conservatives over Doñana “has already become a European issue.”
Also Ernest Urtasun, from the European group of Los Verdes and two legislatures behind him, considers the situation “unusual”. What worries him the most, he comments, is the fact that “the PPE is beginning to play the game of not respecting European laws or the role of the Commission as the guarantor of European law, which is something that until now they had only done the Orbans and the Kaczynskis”. It is, he warns, a “very worrying degradation of the EPP towards what is the European illiberal right: now they no longer only agree with them, but are beginning to use their own methods.”
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