Brussels is committed to the friendly and diplomatic route to help resolve the open crisis between Spain and Algeria as a result of the decision of the Maghreb country to suspend the friendship treaty that unites both countries since 2002. The Vice President of the European Commission and The head of the Trade portfolio, Valdis Dombrovskis, today receives the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, to examine the situation and determine the way forward to resolve the conflict.
"We call on Algeria to back down on this decision," the chief spokesman for the community executive claimed yesterday. "We hope that, in the name of our long and solid partnership that we maintain, Algeria will reverse its decision and work with Spain to overcome the current differences", added Nabila Massrali on behalf of the EU External Action Service. The community spokesmen also recalled that it is the European Union -and not the national governments- who have the competences on international trade. In practice, community sources consulted by this newspaper recall, it implies that Spain cannot adopt commercial reprisals against Algeria as a pressure measure to reactivate the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborhood and Cooperation.
It is part of the message that Dombrovskis will transfer to Albares today in a meeting convened for two in the afternoon and which the head of diplomacy will later report to the media in Brussels. The European Commission also plans to make a statement in this regard after the meeting. The priority of the community executive, as surprised yesterday by the announcement as the Government, is to seek a friendly solution through diplomatic channels instead of resorting to the conflict dispute mechanism included in the bilateral friendship treaty, a long and complicated path that responds to the immediacy with which both Brussels and Madrid aspire to resolve the current situation.
