The electoral advance adds uncertainty to the imminent Spanish presidency of the EU

The early call for general elections in Spain on July 23, announced today by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who said he accepted "in the first person" the poor results yesterday of his party and allies in yesterday's regional and municipal elections , has been received with surprise in diplomatic circles in Brussels.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
29 May 2023 Monday 04:21
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The electoral advance adds uncertainty to the imminent Spanish presidency of the EU

The early call for general elections in Spain on July 23, announced today by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who said he accepted "in the first person" the poor results yesterday of his party and allies in yesterday's regional and municipal elections , has been received with surprise in diplomatic circles in Brussels. "Uncertainty", "shock" and "disaster" for the presidency are some of the comments with which different sources have reacted to the news, which implies that Spain will go to the polls just three weeks after assuming its turn as European presidency.

"It's a very bold move," say European diplomatic sources without hiding their surprise. "Change of priorities", point out from a European institution, where it is regretted that the Spanish presidency of the EU, which will last from July 1 to December 31, clearly goes into the background and "in the air". "The teams will work the same, but the drive will not be the same," add community sources. Although since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which created a President of the European Council and better defined the responsibilities of the High Representative for Foreign Policy, the responsibilities of the rotating presidencies are less than in the past, the governments continue to assuming key functions in determining the agenda of the councils of Ministers of Energy, Justice and the Interior, for example.

Although there are precedents for a country going to the polls in the middle of the European semester, the only precedent that is remembered in the community capital of a similar situation dates back to 1996 and takes us to Italy. His turn as European presidency began in January of that year, with a technocrat, Lamberto Dini, in the post of prime minister. Halfway through his presidency, Dini lost the support of Silvio Berlusconi and called elections for the month of April, when Romano Prodi emerged victorious, so that the EU had two rotating presidents of the Council and two different governments in six months. In the more recent history of the European institutions, the biannual turn of the presidency has caused problems due to its coincidence with other national political events, but the holding of national elections per se has never been considered a problem for the EU.

France, for example, held presidential elections in the spring of 2022 at the same time that he presided over the Council of the Union, a call from which Emmanuel Macron emerged greatly weakened. The date of the appointment with the polls was determined by law. At the European level, it is the Council itself that decides, 10 years from now, the list of countries that will assume the presidency for periods of six months. It did so for the last time in 2009, with a calendar that ran until 2020 but was exceptionally revised in 2016 as a result of Brexit, when the United Kingdom resigned from its turn of presidency, which corresponded to it in the second part of 2017. So, the order of the presidencies was simply advanced six months.

That was how, by rebound, the turn of Paris came forward. The debate about the coincidence with the presidential elections did not arise until five years later, in 2022, when the head of Los Republicanos, the main opposition party, Éric Ciotti, reproached Macron for not following the "example" of Berlin. and postpone the French presidency of the EU in order "not to interfere with the electoral calendar" nationally (ie, not to take advantage of the visibility this task gives national leaders for partisan purposes).

Indeed, in 2002 Berlin, he requested a postponement of his European semester shift to avoid coincidence, but it was not a hasty decision but rather a very planned one. The situation should not have occurred, a priori, until 2006 and four years earlier Germany agreed with Finland that the Nordic country would take the reins six months before, and only give way to the German in 2007.

In the case of Spain, the Popular Party had been protesting the electoral coincidence for some time, fearful that Sánchez, who handles large international meetings with great skill, would use the European semester as an electoral showcase. Simply in the month of July, Sánchez will receive the college of European commissioners in Madrid to inaugurate the presidency. On the 11th and 12th he will participate in the NATO summit in Vilnius. On Thursday the 13th he will give the traditional opening speech for the European semester in Strasbourg. And on July 17 and 18, five days before the appointment with the polls, he will participate in the EU summit with Latin America, an appointment in which Spain will have an outstanding participation. The possibility of a change in the European calendar was never seriously considered and, with the electoral advance announced today, the turn of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the Union has been devalued even before its work program was announced.