The Diplomat
Podemos once again raised doubts yesterday about whether or not it will support the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO in the Congress of Deputies. It did so in a statement to Europa Press by the Secretary for Institutional Action of Podemos and co-spokesperson for the party, María Teresa Pérez.
It is not the first time that Pedro Sánchez’s partner in government has left its support in Parliament for Swedish and Finnish membership of NATO up in the air. Now it does so just a few days after the government submitted the protocols for the accession of Sweden and Finland to the Atlantic Alliance to the Spanish parliament for ratification.
María Teresa Pérez preferred not to reveal in her declarations what position her party will maintain when the texts are voted on in the Congress of Deputies and said that the Parliamentary Group will reflect on the direction of the vote.
However, she insisted that Podemos has a “clear” position and that it defends that “this is not the time to deepen an obsolete structure that is not providing answers to the current international challenges”.
Furthermore, according to the Podemos leader, for the continent “it is not the best decision” to depend on “interests, often conflictive, of foreign powers such as the United States.
Therefore, the way forward for Podemos is to advance towards greater European sovereignty with respect to NATO, she affirms, at the same time as she considers that, with respect to the war in Ukraine, “not enough effort is being made” through diplomatic channels to put an end to the conflict.
Last Monday, the Council of Ministers approved the referral to the Spanish Parliament for approval by the urgent procedure, in which parliamentary time is reduced by half, of the protocols of accession to NATO of Sweden and Finland, which were agreed at the end of June at the NATO Summit in Madrid.
Processing in the Congress of Deputies will begin in September when the session resumes, and although the purple party will vote against, the Protocols are expected to go ahead thanks to the support of the opposition parties (PP, Vox and Ciudadanos).
