Feijóo, against Europe

A change in the common sense of the time that collides directly with the approaches defended by the PP in Spain, anchored in the neoliberal recipes that Mariano Rajoy boldly applied during his mandate. It happened to the leadership led by Pablo Casado, who crashed again and again in his efforts to use Brussels as a lever against the coalition government. A strategy that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has not only maintained, but has expanded.

Until he was unhorsed by his own colleagues, Casado focused his attacks on the Government on the management of European funds that the EU. Despite the fact that Spain has been the most outstanding student when it comes to implementing the reforms agreed with the Commission to receive the money from Brussels, although Von der Leyen has publicly congratulated the president, Pedro Sánchez, on different occasions, and against the evidence of which is the only country that has already received two deliveries of community money, the PP attacked the Executive even with false data.

He lashed out, and lashed out. Because Feijóo follows the same path. Last June, in the midst of the electoral campaign in Andalusia, the president of the PP planted himself in a company benefiting from European funds to demand that the money delivered by the EBU reach the companies. He also demanded to reverse the “low execution” of the first aid package and demanded that the Commission “unlock” the recovery funds. By then, Spain was the only country that had already requested the second tranche, while other states had not even begun to request their share.

By then, Feijóo had already been at the head of the PP for two months. On his first trip to Europe, for the continental PP congress, he already launched harsh broadsides against the government and against the country. “I understand the uneasiness about the internal division and external weakness of my country,” he said.

Doubts about the CGPJ

But the feeling is the opposite. In Europe Spain does not seem to worry much, beyond specific problems such as the blockade of the Judiciary, which has forced the Justice Commissioner, Didier Reynders, to recently visit the country to meet with the Government, PP and judicial associations.

And despite the attempts of the person in charge of Justice of the PP, the deputy secretary Esteban González Pons, Europe does not buy his position. Although it is true that the European Commission recommends that Spain modify the system for electing the members of the CGPJ to give greater prominence to the judges, Reynders has stated that the first, and urgent, thing is to renew the body, blocked by those of Feijóo for almost four years. And then, depending on what the political forces decide, reformulate the law that governs it.

And, also despite the efforts of the PP, the commissioner made it clear that the Spanish situation differs a lot from that of countries such as Hungary or Poland, sanctioned by the Commission for the interference of the Executive Power in the Judiciary.

Not in vain, Spain is far from the tail train of the EU. In fact, the situation in Ukraine has led to a definitive turn from liberal orthodoxy to interventionism in sectors hitherto untouchable.

Against the cap on gas… and the energy transition

The clearest is the energetic. Already in June the president of the Commission pointed out in an interview with elDiario.es the need to “study a complete reform of the electricity market”. She did it after Spain and Portugal uprooted the so-called Iberian exception from the rest of the EU members, the cap on the price of gas in the wholesale market that has managed to contain the electricity bill for individuals and companies.

A cap that Feijóo’s PP rejected outright and that Brussels is now studying how to implement at the continental level as a provisional measure while readjusting the entire market, in addition to extending it to other energy sources such as nuclear and renewables, and even oil.

A full-fledged price control that clashes head-on with the thesis of the Spanish right, which has based its opposition to the coalition government almost exclusively on an axiom of liberal orthodoxy that has prevailed for decades: lower taxes.

But not even in this has the PP had any luck. Perhaps accustomed to past times, the Spanish right has not seen the new zeitgeist imposed by the most powerful German in Europe, Ursula Von der Leyen. Both those of Feijóo and Vox raised the cry in the sky after the Government’s announcement of a new tax on extraordinary profits of energy companies and banks, whose business figures have multiplied with the crisis.

A few days later, the Commission settled the issue by saying that the taxes “are very necessary.” Von der Leyen has promoted a special tribute to energy companies in the EU and has forced Feijóo to contradict himself in a matter of hours and defend a technically different tax from the one proposed by the Government. A vain attempt to get close to the European ember and try to mark distances with Sánchez.

Once again, Brussels was clear: “It may be more useful to give support to families and companies than to lower VAT.” And while the PP intensified the criticism because “the Government is lining up” with taxes, the Commission settled: “They are very necessary.”

In his turns to adapt to the new European message, Feijóo has run into those who do not understand nuances. Isabel Díaz Ayuso not only denies the hierarchies that relegate her, but also anything that does not respond to her mere interest. This was demonstrated in two consecutive interviews in which he pointed out, first, against the new European tax (“last minute occurrence”), and then against Von der Leyen herself when she described the announcement of a savings plan as a “tremendous mistake”. energy at European level in the face of rising bills.

Of course, Feijóo had previously attacked, and strongly, against the energy saving plan promoted by the coalition government, although previously he himself had called for some of the measures contemplated (such as limiting the temperature of the air conditioning) or proposed others that the Executive did not implement, despite the fact that the hoaxes of the right made him think so.

Brussels has also congratulated Spain for the savings plan. As well as for the commitment to renewable energies. In fact, Von der Leyen has proposed taking advantage of the gas crisis to reduce Europe’s dependence on this polluting fossil fuel and delve into the energy transition.

A speech that collides directly with a Feijóo who has demanded that the Government reopen the most polluting plants. Just at a time when Spain is a net exporter of electricity. The leader of the PP went so far as to demand that the environmental rules be suspended during the current energy crisis. Almost immediately, Von der Leyen again left Feijóo out of the game by pointing out the current situation should be used as a lever to delve into the energy transition and the abandonment of fossil fuels. Just the opposite of what was proposed by the Spanish PP.

To close the terrible relationship of the national right with Brussels, the Galician leader has extended his criticism to the Fisheries Commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, leader of the Lithuanian conservative green party. The EU plan to limit trawling and bottom fishing in certain fishing grounds led Feijóo to attack the Commission and immediately attack the coalition government for its alleged inaction.

The problem is that the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, had already announced legal action in advance against a decision that puts the work of many Spanish fishermen at risk. Feijóo, instead of choosing to align himself with the government, sought to directly confront the European Commission.

The PP’s anger with the community authorities is evident, with a supposed ally like Von der Leyen as a declared nemesis of the approaches of the Spanish right. At the recent meeting of the Interparliamentary that the party held in Toledo, the German sent a canned message to try to calm things down with one of the main members of the European PP, just in the week in which Spanish leaders had spoken of her in tone derogatory as a “social democrat”. Von der Leyen had words of encouragement for his “friend” Feijóo, although her brief speech was full of references to the exceptional moment that Europe is experiencing, to the need to place the interests of the market and those of the citizen on the same level. Everything, she said, because of the war in Ukraine, a thesis that directly confronts the story of the PP, which indicates that the crisis is prior to the Russian invasion as a formula to attack the Government.

The message must not have convinced Feijóo very much, who a few days later sat down with José María Aznar to dispatch against the EU. “Europe has always reacted, and it has reacted with great determination,” he said at a colloquium organized by Faes. But, he added that he misses “that determination and that speed in the decisions of the Union, because we are in a conflict that influences Europe in a much more direct way than any other world region and there are no big news either”. His predecessor at the head of the PP added: “Today’s leaders do not interpret reality and have no plans for the future.”

And everything, a few months before the Spanish presidency of the EU begins, which will place Pedro Sánchez at the head of the European Council, hand in hand with the president of the European Executive, with whom he has already shown that he has the best harmony, to Feijóo’s despair.