The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, concluded yesterday in Slovenia his last tour of several European countries in view of the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council, where he managed to gather new support for his proposal to reform the energy market and agreed to hold a first bilateral summit before the summer.
Sánchez was received by the Prime Minister of Slovenia, Robert Golob, at Brdo Castle in Kranj, 20 kilometers north of the capital, Ljubljana. During the official visit, the first by a Spanish president to Slovenia, both leaders agreed to hold a bilateral summit “that will allow closer relations in various matters, with special interest in the economic area”, according to Moncloa.
In this regard, the Slovenian Prime Minister explained at the press conference following the meeting that both had reached an agreement to organize, “before the summer, meetings at government level and a business forum” that will contribute to “increase cooperation between the two countries in global markets”. According to Golob, Slovenia is particularly interested in an increase of Spanish investments in health, pharmaceuticals and energy.
At the same press conference, Pedro Sánchez assured that one of the priorities of the Spanish Presidency will be to defend the economic competitiveness of the European Union and the so-called “open strategic autonomy” -in a geopolitical context marked by the energy crisis derived from the war in Ukraine, the approval of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) by the United States or the competition from China- through a road map based on four key aspects: “energy, health, primary sector and new technologies”.
In this sense, Sánchez insisted, as he did the day before in Austria and Croatia, on the need to promote, during the six-month Presidency of the EU Council, the reform of the electricity market through a new regulatory framework to mitigate prices and reduce volatility. The goal, according to Sánchez, is to find a regulation that ensures a balance between the promotion of European industrial policy and the internal market.
For his part, Golob also defended “the open strategic autonomy of the European Union”, an issue that “will decide in the long term whether or not Europe will continue to be a continent of prosperity”, and warned, along the same lines as Pedro Sánchez, that Europe needs “a viable and competitive economy” and that this competition involves tackling current energy prices, which are “unacceptable”.
