Jose Miguel Blanco | Madrid (EFE) of Valladolid from July 10 to 12, to which will be added the NATO summit that will take place in Lithuania.
Spain will assume that six-month presidency on July 1, and the advancement of the elections ensures from Moncloa that it will not affect the responsibility that the country will incur because it is a matter of state and the forecasts will be maintained.
However, there will be some alteration to the agenda initially considered since, for example, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has asked the European Parliament to postpone his appearance scheduled for July 13, in which he was going to report on the priorities of that presidency.
It was going to be held, therefore, in the middle of the electoral campaign (it will take place from July 7 to 21) and, according to Moncloa, the postponement to September has been requested in an “exercise of responsibility” to leave the European Parliament out of national debates .
However, from the PP this delay is linked to the request in this regard made by the president of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber.
“This has to go on”
Another modification is the cancellation of the concert that was going to be organized in Madrid with the presence of the King and the President of the Government on the occasion of the start of the presidency.
In addition, Sánchez will not make the trip that was going to take him to Poland, Romania and Bulgaria next week as part of his tour of several EU countries prior to the Spanish presidency, nor will he travel to Niger in the middle of the month for a meeting of the Socialist International (organization that he chairs) and to which he was going to add some activity as President of the Government.
But Executive sources assure EFE that these are minimal changes because everything that has to do with the meetings of leaders and ministers of the community countries will be maintained.
“Everything is going to work according to plan, priorities are maintained, central issues and everything is perfectly organized. This has to continue”, they add while stressing that Sánchez will not stop fulfilling his international commitments and, specifically, those derived from assuming the presidency of the Council of the EU.
landing of commissars
If the campaign for the elections will begin on July 7, that same day the series of meetings that will take place since the day before between the European commissioners and the members of the Government will conclude in Madrid.
This is a traditional meeting of the College of Commissioners with the members of the country’s Executive which is in charge of the semi-annual community presidency and which on this occasion will conclude hours before the start of the campaign with a press conference by Sánchez and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
The President of the Government, who on June 29 and 30, just before assuming that six-month presidency, will participate in a meeting of the European Council in Brussels, will also have two other relevant international events in full swing.
It will be on July 11 and 12 when he will be in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, to attend the NATO summit, and a few days later he will travel to Brussels to participate on July 17 and 18 in the European Union-CELAC summit (the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean).
This is an appointment that has not been held since 2015 and that has come to fruition due to Sánchez’s special efforts to strengthen relations between the two regions.
Meetings in Spain, the first in Valladolid
During the days of the electoral campaign, Spain will host four meetings of European commissioners and ministers of all community partners.
From July 10 to 12, the council that will bring together the commissioners and ministers of Energy and the Environment of the EU will take place in Valladolid; On the 13th and 14th, the members of the Council for Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumers met in Madrid; on the 17th and 18th there will be a meeting of the Fisheries Council in Vigo; and from 19 to 21 a meeting of the Justice and Interior Council has been set in Logroño.
The week after the elections, three other councils are scheduled: on July 24 and 25 in Bilbao, the Competitiveness Council; and on the 27th and 28th the Health one will be held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the Research one in Santander.
Before Spain assumes the presidency, some activity related to it has also already closed, such as the meeting that Sánchez will hold at the Moncloa Palace with the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, on June 26. EFE