The president warns that the crisis can become “chronified” and opens up to lowering the energy bill with criticism of the PP’s inefficiency
Seven hours of summit and a declaration as unanimous as minimum that projects an infrequent “unity” of the territorial leaders with the Government to face the complex and challenging management of the humanitarian and economic consequences of the war in Ukraine. But without specifying how the State and the communities will coordinate to face the supportive reception of refugees or how to lower the bill for energy costs that already suffocates companies and families.
This is the result halfway between the positive and the not so much that the Conference of Presidents held in La Palma produced this Sunday and that closed with the so-called ‘Declaration of La Palma’: two pages agreed by the Sánchez Executive and all the autonomous leaders that makes explicit the determination to face in a shared way the reaction before a supervening crisis of capital proportions. But without this, for the time being, it has resulted in valued and immediate initiatives, beyond the roadmap suggested by the country’s alliance. And with the staging by the barons of the PP of their discrepancies with the government’s way of acting, with a different tonality from the preeminent voice this Sunday of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in his premiere as future leader of the popular to the ever more belligerent Isabel Diaz Ayuso.
The messages from the Government to the autonomous communities:
-
Ukraine
The conflict is going to be long and with the risk of becoming chronic and we need the maximum unity. -
Diplomacy
Appeal to China’s role of intermediation and dialogue to find a diplomatic solution -
war crimes
Start of documentation work to promote procedures before the International Criminal Court to initiate proceedings for war crimes and crimes against humanity -
sanctions
Punishment of Russian oligarchs: maximum collaboration with the autonomous communities in the exchange of information to be able to apply them with maximum efficiency. -
Energy
Spain as a solution to Russia’s energy dependency: interconnections of gas, green hydrogen and renewable energies and promotion of the latter. -
gas bill
Support in the development of the proposal of the Government of Spain to decouple the price of gas. -
Supply
Europe has to look for alternative markets. -
farming
Strengthen the Common Agricultural Policy. -
public aid
Guarantee affordable prices for nitrogenous fertilizers and compensation to the affected sectors. -
Taxation
Review of the fiscal rules according to the new economic reality of the war and the end of the pandemic. -
Refugees
Promotion of an immigration and asylum pact: solidarity in the distribution
The summit arrived marked by the exceptionality of the geopolitical moment, with a dazzling impact after two years of a pandemic that has not yet been overcome, and by the first meeting between the President of the Executive and Alberto Núñez Feijóo since the leader of the Xunta de Galicia has been anointed as the replacement for Pablo Casado after the internal schism in the conservative formation. Sánchez and Feijóo made an aside in the meeting, which certifies the opening of the time with another dialogue between the president and the leader of the opposition. And the change of tone was also perceived in the subsequent evaluations of the Galician baron, beyond the fact that it showed what distanced him from Sánchez in the administration of the war challenge. A challenge that the socialist president, according to him wanted to make clear at the meeting, is going “long” and, what is worse, runs the risk of being “chronified” in its devastating impact. Sánchez also asserted his criteria on European funds, after repeated complaints by Casado and his team.
The ‘Declaration of La Palma’ unites positions in an unequivocal condemnation of Russia’s “illegal, unprovoked and unjustified military aggression” against Ukraine, repudiates that the signatories extend to Belarus, while expressing their “support” and their admiration for the Ukrainian people, “a benchmark in defense of democratic values”; which means that the PP endorses Sánchez in his efforts in the EU and in NATO. It is from this common and forceful rejection of the intervention of Vladimir Putin’s troops, against which the Government will open an investigation for possible crimes against humanity, from which the united position to deal with the damage that the conflict is inflicting to the economic reality of Spanish citizenship.
different enthusiasm
A unity that was underlined by the minister spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, because “Spain is stronger today” as a result of the consensus reached and shared by the bulk of the attendees, with greater or lesser enthusiasm and with the harshest criticism of the president of the Community of Madrid, protagonist of the controversy of the day by claiming that 20,000 million from the budget of the Ministry of Equality be dedicated to “helping” families in their “worst moment” due to the escalation of inflation.
The autonomies are endowed with the Government’s commitment that they will have additional financing -to be quantified- to provide coverage for Ukrainian refugees and that meetings will be activated starting this week, with the vice presidents Calviño and Ribera at the head, for ‘the plan response to the consequences of the war’. But the summit highlighted the differences in criteria in an issue that has become nuclear: how to reduce the increasingly unsustainable price paid by companies and citizens for electricity, gas and fuel. In the agreed declaration, the Government opens itself to “intensify” the tax reductions already applied and that suppose a cost for the public coffers of 12,000 million, as Rodriguez stressed, who invited “not to frivolize” with proposals that would affect income with public services are covered.
The objective of the Executive is to await the result offered by the European Council on March 24 and 25, where Spain hopes to extract from its partners what it has not achieved so far and what motivates the community tour that Sánchez will star in the coming days: « decouple” gas from the price of electricity, a measure that, according to the Government, will have an immediate effect to temper runaway inflation. The PP barons believe that the declaration is completely “insufficient” in this area.
“Citizens are not going to understand that their heating is raised and their taxes are not lowered,” said the president of the Xunta, while the Andalusian leader, Juanma Moreno, criticized “the opacity” of the Government. The popular ones came to La Palma with non-mimetic proposals -Ayuso and Mañueco want a super-reduced VAT for electricity, electricity and fuel-, but they did coincide in already applying tax reductions in this area, urgent aid to the affected sectors and something else: that the Executive not only park, as it has done, its announced tax reform, but transform it not to increase tax pressure but to lighten it and in general.
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