The PP supports the NATO Summit, and the Government to maintain our position within the Alliance and with our allies. United We Can, a partner of the Government, no, on the contrary, has called a demonstration against NATO. For this reason, the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, does not understand the words of the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, who accused the PP of a lack of loyalty in foreign policy and in an issue as important as the NATO summit that will be held next week in Madrid.
Speaking to the press in Brussels, at the meeting of leaders of the European People's Party (EPP), prior to the Council meeting, Feijóo assured that he is "surprised that he complains about a party that supports the Government before the NATO summit , and when I myself have sent the President of the Government a proposal for "The defense and security of Spain", he said, and when "part of the government calls a demonstration against NATO".
For the popular president, "that in a European country that celebrates a summit, a part of the Government calls a demonstration for its celebration, and that nevertheless has the support of the opposition" it cannot be said that the opposition party is the unfair.
"Now, we would like that when we are in government, the opposition supports us, in foreign policy, as we are supporting the government of Pedro Sánchez, said Feijóo, who added that "the lack of responsibility that Albares speaks of is not refers to the opposition, but to his government partner".
For Feijóo, the PP has proven to be a state party, when "given the difficulties and internal divisions in the party, as an opposition party it offers the government a security plan to reassure NATO partners and return to consensus in foreign policy", with clear references to Morocco and Algeria. "This is how we fulfill our state commitment," he said.
During the meeting with the leaders of the EPP, including the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Layen, Feijóo proposed, as he explained to the media, that "after Joe Biden's decision to eliminate the federal tax on hydrocarbons to contain inflation, the European Union should take measures in the same direction because the rise in prices affects the competitiveness of our companies and makes products more expensive”.
The president of the PP made it clear that "it is not about establishing a general rule", but about giving freedom to the member states that request it so that they can suppress the tax on hydrocarbons "in an exceptional and temporary way" and thus be able to lower the price of the liter of diesel and gasoline. "If we can lower the price of fuel by half a euro by combining different measures, the liter will drop from two to one and a half euros," he stressed.
It was not the only proposal that Alberto Núñez Feijóo left on the table, since he also requested that the European Central Bank "continue helping to prevent interest rates from increasing exponentially in Spain", that is, in exchange for the Government "do your homework in controlling bureaucratic spending" and invest in the self-employed and companies the European Funds that are being executed "slowly and with little transparency".
He also asked his European partners who are in government that "inflation be declared the number one economic enemy of the European Union", because, he said, "either we lower inflation or we are not going to be able to maintain an economic policy based on current income of our country”.
The president of the PP considers that the Government's rectification in the reduction of VAT on electricity to 5 percent "is on the right track" and for this reason he asks Pedro Sánchez to continue rectifying and accept the rest of the proposal of the economic plan of the PP in favor of families and companies. And it is that, according to Feijóo, Europe has to face two big problems, the war caused by the Russian invasion in Ukraine, and an economic conflict. "If we don't attend to it -he underlined-, when the war ends we will have a runaway economic conflict where Spain is going towards a situation of endemic and runaway debt". He justified this statement in that Spain is the country that has increased its debt the most, 20 percent, the one that reduced its GDP the most in 2020 and the furthest behind in recovering the pre-pandemic GDP.
