The PSOE awaits the executive meeting next Monday so that Pedro Sánchez, once the Basque elections are over, formally confirms an impression that both the party and the Government take for granted: the commitment to Teresa Ribera to head the list to the European elections on June 9. The silences become eloquent in the domes of Ferraz and La Moncloa when questioned by Ribera. All the signs point in the same direction—Brussels—although no one wants to confirm it yet. The election of the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition (Madrid, 1969) would be a declaration of intentions: Sánchez wants to clash against the right and the extreme right in one of the great current ideological battles, the environmental one, and in That bet would have a heavy weight from the Executive. Ribera would raise the flag of the fight against climate change in the face of the climate ambiguity of the PP and the denialism of Vox, PSOE sources highlight. Her contribution to the reform of the electricity market after the price crisis due to the war in Ukraine is another of her strengths.
The socialist leadership does not have much room to resolve the question of the list for the Europeans. The federal committee, the highest body of the PSOE between congresses, will approve it on April 27. The day before, the federal list commission is scheduled to meet to close the candidacy. And this coming Saturday, April 20, the deadline for party groups to propose their candidates ends. The forecast is that Ribera, a Madrid activist, will have great support in his federation. The proposal is not binding—Sánchez will have the last word—but it would be another clue. Like those that Ribera herself and the socialist leader have left in recent days. “It will be what she proposes,” Sánchez praised her last week. Previously, the vice president paved the way by stating that she would be “very happy in one place or another” and assuring: “I see myself as an important asset for my Government and my party.” This Thursday, the president once again praised Ribera as an “accredited, respected and valued woman at the European and multilateral level” in matters related “to climate policies, one of the main challenges facing humanity.” “Spain, thanks particularly to the female leadership of Nadia Calviño - the former Minister of Economy has chaired the European Investment Bank (EIB) since January - and Teresa Ribera, is located in an extraordinary position of influence, as we have not had for many years” , he stressed after the European Council.
While Ribera waits in the chapel, Ferraz maintains that there will be few changes to the list of MEPs. The commitment of the Organization area led by Santos Cerdán is that all federations will be represented in starting positions; that is, in the first 17 or 18 positions. The PSOE obtained 21 seats in 2019, compared to the 13 of the PP, which is now a favorite in the polls. The federal leadership trusts that the good results expected in the Basques and Catalans will provide a “tailwind” to close the distance with the popular ones. One of the objectives is to once again be the party that contributes the most seats to European social democracy at the height of right-wing populism. The Castilian-Leonese Iratxe García, current president of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, is one of the regulars on the list and she will repeat in the top positions, according to Ferraz sources. The continuity of the Galician Nicolás González Casares, the Asturian Jonás Fernández or the Castilian-La Mancha Cristina Maestre is also taken for granted.
The PSOE defined itself as an environmental party in its last Federal Congress, almost three years ago. And Pedro Sánchez himself has put together in the last decade, since his time as a rank-and-file deputy, a green discourse that has helped the PSOE to limit the consolidation of strong environmental alternatives such as the parties that exist in Germany and other Central European countries.
Ribera has become the most likely option to head the list for the Europeans, especially after Josep Borrell, a candidate in 2019, refused to repeat. The vice president, who before being appointed minister in 2018 was already part of Sánchez's trusted team in the opposition and has evolved from an exclusively technical profile to a much more political one, would face two challenges. The first is to concentrate on June 9 the transversal vote of the electorate concerned about adaptation to climate change, and which is above all young and urban. With that vote, Ferraz and La Moncloa hope to close the gap with the PP.
The second challenge would come at the end of June, when the Government would propose Ribera as head of the Energy and Environment portfolios of the European Commission. The rise of the far right may affect the balance of power of the European political families – conservatives, social democrats and liberals – that have until now pulled the strings of the European Commission. The next European Parliament will foreseeably have a very conservative bias, but if Ribera is successful he would become the nemesis of Santiago Abascal's partners throughout Europe. And in the guarantee that the EU would not take steps back in its environmental policies. Or at least contain them.
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Ribera was the first candidate that Sánchez had in mind, but the vice president's intention to remain in the Government led the president to test Borrell to repeat as head of the list, according to different government and party sources. The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, with a long career in Europe and who will turn 77 on April 24, declined to be the candidate, and Sánchez returned to his initial idea: Ribera.
The big question is to what extent Ribera will serve as an incentive. With Borrell, the socialists won the European elections on the two occasions in which he was the candidate: 2004 and 2019. The percentage of support (32.8%) that his candidacy achieved in the last elections even surpassed that which Sánchez obtained a month before in the general ones (28.7%). Ribera now hopes to attract voters disenchanted with Podemos and Sumar, appealing to the “useful vote.” Against him may be the rejection that he generates in the countryside for his roadmap to accelerate the reduction of emissions with farmers on a war footing or his defense of the wolf. But the PSOE hopes to compensate for this with environmentalism and sustainability as a claim, especially in large cities, in elections with a single constituency.
Sources from Ferraz explain that Borrell made it a condition for appearing in the elections not to later collect the MEP certificate. In 2019 he already resisted being the candidate, although in the end he accepted, but five years later the head of European diplomacy has ruled himself out, with the Middle East crisis at its peak. “Everyone understands that I have a job that I cannot leave. The situation is bad and is going to get worse, so the High Representative has to continue until the end of the mandate," he concluded on April 9, in an appearance in which he did not clarify whether the PSOE had asked him to participate in the elections. . If Borrell were to occupy the seat he would have to leave his current position, a crucial position at such a sensitive time for campaigning.
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