Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez accused centre-right opposition party Partido Popular (PP/EPP) of sharing old-fashioned views with the far-right party VOX on gender policies in a clash in parliament on Wednesday.
On International Women’s Day, Sánchez (PSOE/S&D) defended the work done since he took office in 2018, calling his government Spain’s most “feminist” executive, citing that “despite the differences, what worries women are the similarities between the PP and the far-right” of VOX.
As an example, Sanchez referred to the regional PP-VOX coalition government in the Castilla and León region.
Sánchez’s government places feminism and equality at the heart of its political action, the prime minister said, while Gamarra accused him of exactly the opposite.
“He cannot call himself a feminist when they (PSOE) have approved a law that has benefited more than 730 sexual aggressors (….)”, she lamented.
Meanwhile, PP’s President Alberto Núñez Feijóo said that the best way for the prime minister to celebrate International Women’s Day would have been to apologise for having approved that law.
The prime minister defended his government’s achievements, such as increasing the minimum wage, the revaluation of pensions, the equalisation of equality and paternity leave and aid schemes to benefit women, while the PP “accumulates appeals in the Constitutional Court against women’s rights”, he stated.
On Wednesday, Equality Minister Irene Montero (Unidas Podemos/GUE-NGL) said that the progressive coalition is not “at risk”, but women’s rights in the Iberian country since Tuesday’s vote are.
Spain will hold its municipal elections in May, which many believe will be the first litmus test for Sanchez’s governing coalition with Unidas Podemos, with general elections due in December.
Madrid takes over the presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of the year.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.EURACTIV.es)
Source: euractiv.com
