The Government is committed to keeping the channels of dialogue open with Algeria and resorting to Brussels if it is verified that commercial reprisals continue
A week after Algeria froze all bank transactions with Spanish companies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still trying to decipher the scope and consequences of a diplomatic crisis that threatens to overflow. The slogan that is repeated the most in the Santa Cruz Palace, at least in the face of the public, is to seek “a negotiated solution” and cling to Brussels to analyze whether the Association Agreement between the bloc and the Maghreb country has been violated . But the reality is that on both shores of the Mediterranean they are preparing to face a long diplomatic struggle.
Among the Spanish companies that trade with Algeria, fear has already begun to spread that other foreign companies, especially Italian and French, will take the place that they have temporarily vacated. Although the gas supply, for the moment, is safe, there is no less than 1,800 million euros at stake in imports.
The CEOE held a meeting on Wednesday to study the situation and its members showed great concern. It is taken for granted among the employers that they are going to lose Algerian clients and they confirm that the blockade, despite the fact that the Algerian delegation in Brussels denied it last Friday, is a reality. Operations carried out before June 9 are not affected and payments are made normally, as reported by Foreign Affairs. But this does not happen with those carried out on a date after the rupture of the friendship treaty between the two countries.
Moncloa has ruled out turning the derision made by the official Algerian press against the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, into a war. The first was branded a “reckless socialist” and the second, an “arsonist” and “amateur diplomat.” The government spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, justified this Thursday this position by “responsibility” and “prudence”. “We are keeping calm, which corresponds to the Government,” she settled.
Nor do they value the dismissal of the Algerian Finance Minister, Abderramán Raouya, who had only been in office for four months and the order to freeze Spanish bank accounts came out of his portfolio. A movement that could be translated as an Algerian attempt to calm the waters.
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