The first official meeting between Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz to reissue the coalition Government has been “productive”, as Nacho Álvarez, Secretary of State for Social Rights and leader of the Sumar negotiating team, explained at the end of the meeting, because it has served to that both formations decide to accelerate the meetings. But he has also shown that the discrepancies in matters of social, labor, housing and tax rights continue to be “core,” in Álvarez's words.
Specifically, Álvarez stressed that there are substantial discrepancies in matters such as reduction of working hours, new labor statutes, regulation of dismissal, housing and price control, or taxation. In these matters, he stressed, despite the fact that the work between PSOE and Sumar began at the beginning of August, hardly any progress has been made.
Álvarez insisted that the program for the coalition government must be “ambitious” and that the result cannot be an executive that works “idle”, but must face an agenda of transformations that expand social rights, as dictated the electoral result.
For Sumar, after the experience of four years of coalition, it is essential that the government agreement reflects “black on white” what the executive's objectives are. In any case, Álvarez indicated that Sumar does not contemplate any other scenario other than the agreement and has set the objective that the pact between both groups be ready before the end of the month of October.
The Secretary of State indicated that in the negotiation there are no red lines, but there is the duty that the government program responds to the voters' demands. “It cannot be a Government that administers what has been done in these four years, but rather it must deepen the transformations.”
Regarding the negotiation of the amnesty with the Catalan independence forces, Álvarez has said that Sumar and PSOE do not have any disagreement in this regard and that the position of both parties is common.
