The European Commission is slowly digesting Spain’s unprecedented request for it to mediate between the country’s main political parties and help renew the highest judicial authority, deadlocked for years, in yet another political mess that is hurting Madrid’s credibility on the EU stage.
“It is unusual for the Commission to have this responsibility, and we were asked just before Christmas to give an answer, so give us time so that the way we answer is useful and helps to solve the problem,” Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer said on Monday.
On 23 December, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and centre-right opposition leader Alberto Núnez Feijóo agreed to ask the Commission to mediate their negotiations on appointing politically independent members to the top judicial body, the General Council of the Judicial Power (CGPJ), as well as overhauling the way these are elected.
The Commission, used to seeing member states beg Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to stay away from national matters, seems to have been caught off-guard by such an unusual request and is asking for time to give Spain an answer that “will help move the process forward”, Mamer said.
“Let us not forget that this is the responsibility of the Spanish national authorities and not of the Commission,” he reminded Spain.
The Commission’s quest to find a suitable honest broker has become more arduous as EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders, who was flagged as a potential mediator, is now eyeing being elected as the Council of Europe secretary general, which may keep him busy in the coming months.
The CGPJ, which governs Spain’s judicial branch and safeguards its independence, has been under fire since 2018 due to a long-lasting feud between the socialists (PSOE) and centre-right (PP), who have failed to renew the body’s members, although their mandates expired five years ago.
The issue has been repeatedly brought up in the Commission’s annual rule of law reports, but to date, these warnings have not been addressed or have been lost in the cross-fire of accusations of neglect of duty traded between Spain’s main political forces in a bid to scratch a few extra votes in regional and national elections.
Let’s not forget that Sánchez loudly proclaimed in September that Spain was ready to ditch its “peripheral role”, move to the major league of EU nations and offer EU leadership.
“For too many decades, we have been satisfied as a peripheral country, a secondary actor in the negotiations in Brussels, following the positions set by other larger or more influential member states,” Sánchez said at the time.
But how can a country that cannot fix its own internal issues teach leadership lessons to fellow member states?
It is not the first international mediator that Spain is bringing in to address internal political issues. The socialist government and Catalan independence parties – whose support is crucial for Sánchez – have recently engaged in a constructive dialogue with the supervision of El Salvadorian diplomat Francisco Galindo Vélez.
It is also not the first time Spain has shocked EU institutions by bringing up internal issues.
As Euractiv already reported, a flash request by the Spanish EU Council presidency in September to make Catalan, Basque, and Galician EU official languages did not go down well with member states’ diplomats, who saw it as a desperate attempt by the socialists to get the Catalan nationalists to support their government.
Most recently, Spanish internal politicking engulfed Brussels after the socialists agreed on a controversial amnesty law with the Catalans, while the conservative opposition made sure to call for a debate on the issue during a European Parliament plenary.
And so, the Commission saw itself entangled right in the middle of a letter-exchanging frenzy by the Catalans, the socialists, the centre-right, and the far-right, all begging von der Leyen and Reynders to intervene in their favour.
Instead of learning to deal with its internal issues, Spain seems to have trained the Commission to expect more in the same vein, but that is not the hallmark of leadership, nor does it befit the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy.
The Roundup
Education Minister Gabriel Attal was appointed France’s prime minister on Tuesday, just months ahead of EU elections, in the hope of setting a new clear political line after heavy political instability that had sapped President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity.
The European Commission announced on Tuesday it is examining the nature of the relationship between tech multinational Microsoft and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, as the recent ousting and reinstatement of the latter’s CEO highlighted the companies’ close connection.
The Belgian presidency of the EU Council of Ministers proposed changing the internal structure of the EU institution dealing with digital matters to make Europe’s voice better heard at the international level.
A year after a universal ban on per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) was proposed in the EU, a new study found that PFAS affect people as early as the fetal stage of development.
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said Belgium’s experience with national political hurdles will guide the bloc through the many challenges of the upcoming six-month-long election run-up.
People with intellectual disabilities are legally impeded when it comes to voting in seven EU countries, bringing about a de facto lack of access to voting in the European elections in June, the director of Inclusion Europe campaign group told Euractiv in an interview.
France’s main energy priorities for 2030 largely promote nuclear power as a way of ditching fossil fuels while failing to mention the EU’s renewable energy targets.
Look out for…
- Informal meeting of employment and social affairs ministers Wednesday-Friday.
- Maroš Šefčovič receives leaders of European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity on Wednesday.
Views are the author’s
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
