The Government strongly disagrees with the disruptive vision of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who thinks that the multilateral order based on rules is part of the past while the crisis unleashed by the war in Iran does not subside despite the fact that Donald Trump has declared it “practically over.” “The dilemma is not an old order versus A new order is an international order versus the international disorder, which led us to two world wars. The world is changing, but the values and principles of the European Union should not change,” the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, said this Tuesday night in an interview in elDiario.es.
Previously, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had already set the tone for the Executive on this issue. “Europe has to defend the international order because the alternative to the international order is disorder,” José Manuel Albares has been blunt, in contrast to the head of the Community Executive, who on Monday caused a political earthquake after assuring in his speech before the EU ambassadors that Brussels “can no longer be the guardian of the old world order, of a world that has disappeared.”
The Moncloa has not raised any complaints but has not hidden its discomfort with the president of the Commission, with whom Pedro Sánchez was in tune in the last legislature in the crises of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine but who in her current mandate has been highly questioned for the weakness she demonstrated in Trump’s tariff push or her alignment with Israel in the Gaza massacre. “We fully identify with António Costa’s words,” Albares has been clear. The president of the European Council and former Portuguese prime minister, one of Sánchez’s great allies as could be seen in victories such as the “Iberian exception” for the peninsula to stop inflation due to the rise in energy prices in 2022, has defended that the EU “must defend the international order based on rules” as it has been doing until now.
“If there is one thing that is evident, it is that there is no opposition between an old order and a new order. There is opposition between an international order and disorder, and if we continue betting on disorder we will reach chaos. And where there is no law there is force, the law of the jungle,” the Foreign Minister differentiated in his appreciation of multilateralism in the appearance after the Council of Ministers.
The Copernican turn proposed by Von der Leyen has met with a resounding rejection by the Government with the EU suffering the consequences of the bombings of Iran, which do not seem to be going to bring down the ayatollah regime, and in a global context in which Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu do not respect the international order and impose a new world without rules. “There is no opposition between an old order and a new order that would replace it,” Albares reiterated. Spain maintains as pillars “international law, the de-escalation of the conflict and the promotion of diplomacy” to resolve the crisis due to the unilateral attack by Washington and Tel Aviv on Tehran.
The response of the Iranian autocracy, spreading the conflict throughout the Middle East and the Caucasus, has further increased instability in the region and in international markets, skyrocketing oil and gas prices and aggravating uncertainty over their supply. “One has to choose between the right or the alternative, which is force. Or for peace or the use of war in foreign policy, or for progress or historical involution. The international order is not only international law, it is multilateralism, it is free trade, it is everything that makes for virtuous relations between the different States. And, furthermore, the EU is above all a construction of rights. The EU is above all its treaties,” Albares stressed.
This Tuesday, the Executive held its second Council of Ministers since the beginning, on February 28, of the attack by the United States and Israel on Iran in a context of enormous market instability, with energy prices at the expense of the resolution of a conflict that has spread throughout the Middle East and the Caucasus. The Executive has not set a date to approve a package of measures in which it does not rule out tax reductions and similar to the one it activated after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to contain inflation and cushion the impact of a crisis that “is already noticeable in the pockets”, as the Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, pointed out on Monday, and more room has been given to act while waiting for the evolution of the crisis. “We are prepared to act, we have demonstrated it in situations as complex as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, with a comprehensive response plan to protect families, companies and the self-employed and strategic measures that have shown that our country is less exposed to market volatility,” third vice president Sara Aagesen wanted to convey “calm.” Government sources explain that the reaction of the Executive will depend on the markets and what measures Brussels proposes, and they reserve the right to launch the first bazooka of measures before the European Council next week.
The review of the world order that emerged from the Second World War has not caused the only disagreement between the Government and Von der Leyen. Aagesen has stated that the “winning bet” in Spain is renewable energies after the President of the Commission has described the reduction of nuclear energy production in the EU as “a strategic error”. “In Spain we have an unlimited resource that is renewable. We have sun, we have wind, we have talent, we have companies that have opted all these years (…) for renewables. These companies have not opted for new investment in nuclear generation and I want to highlight it, that is the case,” highlighted the third vice president. In recent months, the Government has opened up to granting an extension to the useful life of nuclear power plants in Spain, but without tax concessions. The Executive is waiting for the Nuclear Safety Council to rule on the safety conditions that the revision of the calendar would entail. The clock is ticking for Almaraz, in Extremadura, with two reactors from the early 1980s whose closure was scheduled for 2027 and 2028.
Meanwhile, the PP spokesperson in Congress, Ester Muñoz, has been very harsh with the Government by maintaining that all the movements that the president is carrying out at the international level are “using” them to “cover up” the cases of corruption that affect the PSOE and his family, reports Virginia Martínez. The popular deputy has also aligned herself with Von der Leyen under the following interpretation: “It is evident that the world has changed and that if you want a world with weapons you have to have the ability to impose those norms,” she expressed at a press conference in Congress. “And at this time the EU does not have the capacity to impose these rules. But this is not my opinion, what Von der Leyen said is obvious. Of course we want a multilateral world. Of course we are against war, but just because we are in favor of all that and against war does not mean that other actors in the world are also with us,” Muñoz continued. “While other countries were rearming. Europe has been on other issues, closing mines and ending livestock farms,” he stressed.
More than 5,600 Spaniards evacuated from the Persian Gulf
Albares has detailed that so far there are 5,685 Spaniards evacuated from the Middle East, a figure that this Tuesday will exceed that of 6,000 expatriates after the arrival in Spain of three chartered flights from the United Arab Emirates and two from Qatar. “Our objective is to repatriate every last Spaniard who wishes to do so and, of course, we are not going to leave any Spaniard behind,” stated the minister, who indicated that nine land evacuation operations have been carried out (from Tehran to Baku, from Jerusalem to Amman, from Tel Aviv to Cairo, from Bahrain to Riyadh – on two occasions – and from Kuwait to Riyadh – on three occasions), in addition to three air evacuation operations with Spanish army planes.
The cost of oil and gas is falling after Trump almost ended the war due to the escalation of crude oil. The price of a barrel of Brent started the day with a decrease of 7.5%, although it remained above 90 dollars – it reached over 110 dollars -, still well above the 72 dollars prior to the offensive against the ayatollah regime. Tehran’s response, making it difficult for oil and LNG tankers to transit through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the planet’s oil and liquefied gas circulates, has skyrocketed the amounts until the truce brought about by Trump’s words. Gas has also given a break: the European reference, the TTF contract negotiated in the Netherlands, has fallen 13% to 49 euros per megawatt hour.
Pending whether the truce is temporary or lasting, the Government has approved the ninth consecutive increase in study scholarships, reaching 2,578 million euros. The amount increases by 84% compared to the last year of the PP Government with Mariano Rajoy. The Council of Ministers has also restored universal access to free public healthcare, including for people in an irregular situation. The Executive has given the green light to a royal decree that ends the bureaucratic loophole that left thousands of migrants out of assistance and a responsible declaration will suffice.
