The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, yesterday harshly criticized the PP’s decision to boycott his meeting convened with Spanish MEPs at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Strasbourg and asked the main opposition party “not to instrumentalize and not politicize” the upcoming Spanish Presidency of the EU.
“Last Monday I had a meeting in Strasbourg to which I invited all the Spanish MEPs attached to political groups,” recalled Albares, speaking to the press in Berlin during his official visit to Germany.
“All of them attended, except for the Popular Party, which has chosen once again, in my opinion wrongly, to be the opposition when it should be Spain”, in a matter of “State policy such as the European Presidency”, he regretted. “I would like the Spanish Presidency of the EU not to be instrumentalized and not to be politicized by the PP to make opposition at this time of electoral cycle,” he concluded.
Albares had summoned the Spanish MEPs of the different groups to present the agenda of the Spanish Presidency of the EU in the second half of the year, but from the ranks of the PP conditioned by letter to the minister his presence to a previous meeting of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, with the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The minister organized a round of contacts with Spanish parliamentarians attended by parliamentarians from PSOE, Ciudadanos, Vox, ERC, Podemos, IU, PNV and BNG. Apart from the PP, Junts and Anticapitalistas MEP Miguel Urbán were absent from the meeting.
