The migration pact that the Government has been trying to close for a year with the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, and with the PP, is at a dead end. The party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo rejects any agreement option that would allow easing the migratory pressure on the border regions with Africa if Pedro Sánchez’s Executive does not fully assume its proposals, not only in the rules for the distribution of migrant minors between the autonomous communities. , but in immigration policy as a whole. The closure of the PP has a positive effect for its barons, who see the way paved to approve the 2025 budgets after Vox, which already used this reason to break all its coalitions in the autonomies, warned that it would not vote in favor if They agreed to ease the pressure in other autonomous communities.
“The agreement is impossible,” said an autonomous president of the PP this Friday during the events in Congress to celebrate Constitution Day. He was referring bluntly to a possible understanding to reform article 35 of the Immigration Law and systematize the distribution of migrant minors from the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla to other regions of Spain. A new multilateral meeting was held on Thursday that not only ended without a common point, but with the PP convinced that they will not even meet again in a similar forum to discuss the issue again.
“There are no more meetings,” said a representative of the PP leadership present at the meeting at the headquarters of the Canary Islands Government in Madrid on Thursday. This Friday, in the Hall of Lost Steps in Congress, the conclusion was the same. “We are going to vote no” to a proposal to reform the immigration law, Feijóo anticipated in an informal conversation with journalists. The leader of the PP accused the Government of “not making any proposals” and of “using the Canary Islands as a hostage” in the negotiations.
But it is the PP that takes advantage of the immigration pressure on the Canary Islands to impose its own immigration policy. Feijóo and his people have put Italy as an example this Friday. The country chaired by Giorgia Meloni has reduced the arrival of migrants to its shores, but 2024 will end with a higher number of people choosing Spain to enter Europe, according to official data.
Feijóo complained that “the Government has not passed any paper”, but different sources, including people from the PP present at Thursday’s meeting, confirm that the Canary Islands president, Fernando Clavijo, did propose a numerical specification on the number of migrant minors. that your community can absorb. The fundamental discrepancy is in determining what number of kids each community should care for with its resources, and how the central government takes care of the rest.
At Thursday’s meeting, a representative of the Ministry of Finance was present who, according to different sources from both the Government and the PP, suggested to Feijóo’s negotiator, Miguel Tellado, that they should use specific figures that the communities need to evaluate whether it can be done or not. assumed by the State Budget. But the leader of the PP himself confirmed this Friday that his response was that the Government should discuss this with the autonomous communities in a sectoral meeting and that his objective was to establish a new immigration policy for the State.
This sectoral meeting will be held after the holidays, as confirmed yesterday by the Ministry of Children led by Sira Rego.
Feijóo said that an agreement is “very difficult” due to the Government’s efforts to reform article 35 of the Immigration Law. Last July, Congress voted for the reform, but it fell due to the rejection precisely of the PP and Junts, with whom the Government is now negotiating that the State share powers in matters of immigration with Catalonia. Executive sources maintain that they will resort to the royal decree-law if the PP does not agree to negotiate.
Regional budgets
The blocking of the distribution of migrant minors has a positive effect for the PP barons. This same week, Vox once again used the kids who arrive in Spain without their parents to pressure the regional presidents of the right who do not have a sufficient majority to govern, and with them Feijóo. If in the summer Santiago Abascal’s party broke the regional executives to show its rejection of the agreement to welcome minors, now it has threatened to vote against the 2025 accounts.
Whether it was due to the threat or not, the PP blockade allows the barons to breathe a little easier, who this year have attended Congress in a dwindling delegation to celebrate the anniversary of the Constitution. Isabel Díaz Ayuso (Madrid), Fernando López Miras (Murcia), Jorge Azcón (Aragón), Alfonso Fernández Mañueco (Castilla y León) and Alfonso Rueda (Galicia) attended.
Of them, Miras, Azcón and Mañueco need other parties to get their 2025 accounts, and both the Castilian-Leonian and the Aragonese can turn to groups other than Vox to find the numbers. In the case of Miras, the PSOE has denied any support.
In any case, none of them showed any concern about the future of their budgets and they see it as feasible to move them forward, with or without Abascal’s extreme right. Mañueco recalled that, for the moment, he has obtained a sufficient majority to approve the spending ceiling and that no group has presented a complete amendment. Also in the case of Murcia, the president was very optimistic when it came to meeting the conditions set out by Vox, once the obstacle of welcoming migrant minors had been overcome.
Mazón and Ayuso
Much of the conversation with Feijóo revolved around the situation in the Valencian Community and the landing of Minister Óscar López in Madrid.
Feijóo reiterated the PP’s absolute support for Carlos Mazón, staged the day before with a visit by the parliamentary spokesperson to Valencia. “How are we not going to support the president of the Generalitat?” he asked journalists. The leader of the PP said that the Valencian president is “trying to replace the Government of Spain”, which he considers absent in the resolution of the catastrophe caused by DANA on October 29.
“He is the only one who continues to show his face. “He’s not leaving,” he said about Mazón. Feijóo also endorsed Mazón’s continuity at the head of the Generalitat to “lead the reconstruction” of Valencia, and assured that he will repeat as a candidate “if the reconstruction is satisfactory.” Of course, the president of the party recalled that “the last word will be the national leadership”, which in the PP has the power to appoint and remove regional candidates. “The decision will be linked to what the neighbors think,” he advanced.
Feijóo also gave Ayuso homework in his future confrontation with Óscar López, as he revealed to the press. The leader of the PP criticized the way in which the minister landed in Madrid. “The internal democracy of the PSOE is the closest thing to the Kremlin. “It’s scary,” he said. And he concluded: “I told Isa, Herrera got 20 points, let’s see how many you get.”
#barons #paved #budgets #Feijóo #blocks #immigration #pact
