Felipe VI receives the president of the CE./ Photo: Casa de SM el Rey
The Diplomat. 20/07/2018
The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, starred yesterday in Madrid a day of marked monarchical character, which began with a meeting with King Felipe VI at the Palace of La Zarzuela and concluded with a fiery praise for his father, Juan Carlos I, during his conference at the Carlos de Amberes Foundation.
The European Commission’s President was received by Felipe VI, with whom he had a 45-minute rendezvous in the King’s office in the presence, among others, of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell. At the end of this meeting, Don Felipe received, in the presence of Juncker himself, the Board of the Carlos de Amberes Foundation.
In the afternoon, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg (whose visit to La Zarzuela was the third since the enthronement of the monarch) gave a masterclass at the Carlos de Amberes Foundation’s headquarters, entitled New perspectives for the EU’s future, in which it was presented by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Yesterday was the first visit of the EC President to Spain since the arrival of Sánchez to the Presidency of the Government, although both had already met a couple of times in Brussels.
During the XIV Commemorative Lesson at the Carlos de Amberes Foundation, Pedro Sánchez suggested to Juncker that, during the meeting he will hold next week with US President Donald Trump, he will convey the message that «Europe will always be friends with its allies and in particular of American society”.
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The president of the EC and Sánchez denounce the «national selfishness» that lead to «blindness»
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«The EU does not intend to be an enemy of anyone, but an ally of global progress”, an objective that goes through «the overcoming of national selfishness», he added during the ceremony, which was attended by Borrell and the Ministers of Economy and Business, Nadia Calviño, and Health, Consumption and Social Welfare, Carmen Montón.
In the same line, Juncker affirmed during his lecture that the combination between nationalism and populism «leads to blindness and war, it has always been that way”.
He also said that both Spain and Europe have a lot to owe to the people who, after the Franco dictatorship and during the Transition, decided to «take history into their own hands».
«Spain decided not to suffer history, but to make history», he said, and in that work highlighted the figure of «a great King of which all Europe can be proud», alluding to Juan Carlos I, whose political image lives difficult moments difficult due to recent information that implicates him in cases of corruption and money laundering.
To conclude his journey in Madrid, Juncker will participate today in an event at the Embassy of Luxembourg, where he will be awarded the Marqués de Villalobar Prize, in memory of the Ambassador of Spain in Belgium between 1921 and 1926.
