Alberto Núñez Feijóo wants special treatment from Pedro Sánchez. The PP will plant the Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, next week in Strasbourg because it conditions his presence at a meeting to address Spain’s priorities in the face of the rotating presidency of the EU to the fact that the President of the Government holds an exclusive meeting beforehand with the main opposition leader. This has been communicated to him by the head of the delegation, Dolors Montserrat, in a letter in which he thanks him for the “deference” to the MEPs, also to the conservatives, but announces that they will not participate until Sánchez receives Feijóo. “Talking on us cannot mean taking us for granted,” she says in the letter.
“We will therefore be delighted to hear about your approach when your proposal has been discussed in a previous meeting between the President of the Government and the President of the main opposition party. For the purposes of balancing agendas, we are waiting for them to tell us when they plan to hold that meeting and we will be available to meet later, ”says the PP MEP.
The PP maintains that Sánchez must expose his plans before Feijóo. “It would have been desirable that before these meetings that you propose, the President of the Government would have addressed the main opposition party in Spain to outline the main axes and objectives of the next EU Presidency in the second half of 2023 and be able to Thus, from the dialogue, negotiate the corresponding proposals for such a relevant period, as we have always offered ”, Montserrat points out in the letter in which she informs Albares that the MEPs condition their presence to that previous meeting between Sánchez and Feijóo.
Relations between the president and the leader of the PP have been practically nil since a year ago the former Galician president assumed the presidency of the party and they were blown up when the head of the opposition unilaterally broke off the negotiations for the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).
Feijóo’s PP has also tried to torpedo the Government in Brussels both in the management of European funds and in key negotiations such as the pension reform. On his last trip to the community capital, the conservative leader questioned the agreement reached between the Executive and the European Commission for pensions and even went so far as to defend the position that Emmanuel Macron is maintaining in France, where the streets have been on fire for weeks. Likewise, conservatives constantly question the situation of the rule of law in Spain.
The PP is pressing the Government so that Feijóo can visit the troops in Latvia after NATO rejected his first attempt. Conservatives maintain that it was the Ministry of Defense that prevented that trip. “Weeks ago, the director of President Feijóo’s cabinet addressed his requesting a new date from the Ministry and he has still not received any response or information due to this delay in the response,” the vice secretary for international relations, Esteban, told him. González, to the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, in a letter sent this Thursday.