Socialists candidates condemn Juncker’s appointment as EC’s president./ Picture: Fórum Europa.
The Diplomat. Madrid.
The three candidates to the General Secretariat of the PSOE as well as the Socialist Youth censured the leadership of the party, which is still led by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. They are condemning their approval of the motion that the Socialist MPs support on 16 July the election of the conservative Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission for a five year term.
The first to criticise the agreement between the People’s Party and the Socialists in Strasburg was José Antonio Pérez Tapias, who said that he did not comprehend why Ferraz hadn’t consulted with them the support that the socialist Euro MPs are being asked to give to the People’s Party candidate. “The current leadership of the PSOE considered that it does not have to consult its colleagues, who are mere candidates”, denounced Pérez Tapias in declarations he made to Europa Press, before adding that if the three contenders to taking over from Rubalcaba agree on the issue, “which, it can be seen, is widely supported within the party”, it is clear that, whether or not the consultation is carried out, there exists a “contradiction” in its core that “must be resolved”.
The PSOE’s backing of Juncker evidences, according to Pérez Tapias, that they are functioning “in terms of a great coalition in the European arena”, a position which is “very difficult” to explain in Spain considering the fact that in the recent European campaign, the PSOE insisted on the need to differentiate themselves from the PP.
Eduardo Madina requested from his fellow European MPs that they do not vote for the People’s Party candidate for President of the European Commission, so that they don’t then have to “leave that pact in a few months”. Pedro Sánchez warned that Juncker is a person that presided the EU “at the most difficult moment of austerity” from there that he cut back “a lot of the possibilities for growth and the creation of employment in Spain and in the south of Europe”.
The Spanish Young Socialists (Juventudes Socialistas, in Spanish) also expressed their “non-conformity” with the possibility that the European Socialist Party back Juncker’s candidature, and pointed out that it is a “disloyalty” which the Socialists can’t allow themselves.
We didn’t campaign for a great coalition; we campaigned to transform the left into a majority project capable of transforming the Union. Protecting a right wing that is conservative, speculative and limits freedoms and rights makes us feel profoundly betrayed by Martin Schulz and by those that asked us to trust him” criticised SYS’s Secretary General, Nino Torre, in a communique.
The PSOE needs, according to Torre “a different project that manages to relaunch social democracy as a clear alternative in Europe, not to ally themselves with the right wing that has brought us here”.
