The Bilateral Hispano-Lusa Summit held this Thursday in Trujillo (Cáceres) arrived at the worst moment for the maximum leaders of Spain and Portugal, the Socialists Pedro Sánchez and António Costa.
Both rule minority supported by parties located more on the left in the parliamentary arc.
The first, Spanish, faces these days one of the most delicate moments, if not the one that, of its government agreement with we can, which makes the coalition staggered.
The Portuguese Prime Minister is heading at early elections at the beginning of next year.
And that instability has inexorably marked this 23rd meeting between both countries, which is now promised to be held every year.
However, and by difference – as Pedro Sánchez himself explained before the media – of what happens in Portugal, where the ‘Electoral Button’ does not tighten the Prime Minister, but the President of the Republic, in Spain, the uncertainty does not arrive, in Spain
less for a moment, in so much.
This underscore the president of the Spanish Government: “I hope that the legislature will doubt until the year 2023”.
It is true that he expressed a desire and will also be confirmed with the approval of the budgets, where they already threaten around the Esquerra and PNV corner.
What was clear throughout the day in Extremane lands are the differences – despite the gestures during the meeting that he intentionally provoked Sánchez to calm the waters – between the two vice presidenties, Nadia Calviño and Yolanda Díaz.
Do not hide it.
Sitting one next to the other in the signing of the agreements and at the afternoon press conference, nor was they looked at themselves, either in the space of time between both acts.
They did not coincide in the Correos that made up their Portuguese counterparts and journalists.
One of your back to the other.
One time they did, in a joint photo of most of the ministers of both countries that were improvised shortly before Sánchez and Costa intervened.
Nothing more.
In fact, in those Correros Díaz left meridyly clear that the problem is not the PSOE nor Sánchez at the time of labor reform but a part of the government.
The same terms that comes using these days.
Nor was Sánchez beyond, who pulled the manual before the question of the press: “It is necessary to recover the consensus that broke in 2012 by the PP with the different social agents” to insist that this is a government that complies with
Its commitments – snapped, both with the legislature pact signed by we can include eliminating labor reform but also specified, the agreement reached with Brussels on labor reform to receive European funds in return.
What he did not explain is how he will meet both.
Of course, he specified that “we are a government that he fulfills and that he will fulfill his commitments and is that it is essential that we do it, because we must modernize our labor standards,” he added.
Asked about the so-called ultraactivity and the primacy of sectoral or company agreements within the labor reform, it has indicated that “they are part of the road map that this Government shares and that is going to be launched when that reform is addressed”
.
As a summary, he wished the maximum “coordination to address this reform, the maximum dialogue and the greatest consensus to achieve a very important reform.”
But there is also the risk of the next budgets for the stability of Sánchez, who asked in Trujillo “an even greater dose of responsibility” to the political parties that, without mentioning them expressly, have already threatened to be able to lie down, as it has made script and the
PNV
“Citizens claim stability and these are budgets for recovery,” warned the president of the Government, which took out chest figures that were exactly known on Thursday, those 20 million people employed, one figure, which he remembered as recalled.
Sánchez, it was not produced since 2008. Therefore, he said, they are not times of rupture but to seek stability.
However, he did not mention at any time of the intervention of him the brutal rise of the IPC to 5.5% of the month of October, the largest in 29 years, and that seriously threatens economic recovery.
Although the entire atmosphere of the meeting turned on instability (Portuguese prime minister declined to answer any question about his delicate situation) of both countries and about the relations between Calviño and Díaz – or better said, the lack of relationships-, the case is
that the Summit – attended by three Vice-Presidents and six Ministers of Spain – boarded theoretically subjects, and more with European funds by means, in which both delegations have committed to establishing common projects that benefit from
it.
In fact, in Trujillo, up to nine documents were signed, with the Friendship and Cooperation Treaty as a relevant of a cooperation that was institutionally forged since 1977, with Adolfo Suárez and Mario Soares as Maximas Responsible. “We now adapt it to the new reality after the pandemic,” Sánchez, who has already maintained a meeting with coastline in the Lusa de Guarda city in October of last year. Among other things, progress was made in the status of the cross-border worker, where a common census will be carried out, among other issues. In addition, in the recovery plans of the European Funds, specific cooperation in the area of the automobile, specifically in the electric vehicle or in lithium batteries, and also in aspects such as ecological transition, renewable energies, ( Green hydrogen boost), spatial technology or digital infrastructure, such as the creation of 5G highway. All this under the umbrella of the 70,000 million euros that will arrive from Europe.
In any case, in what was not progressed, nor was it in the agenda, despite its importance, it was in the development of the railroad, promised precisely at a bilateral summit between both countries in 2003 to link Madrid-Lisbon by Extremadura.
Two decades later, there are barely the works, and not yet finished, between Plasencia and Badajoz, so Sánchez was limited to underlining that they will be ready in this section for his circulation next summer.
Of the rest, there is no news.
