A branch of the Spanish political debate in the European Parliament

Of all the positions in the European Parliament to which Dolors Montserrat could have aspired, the former minister and head of the PP list in the 2019 European elections surprised many when she asked to chair the Petitions Committee, considered second level and with almost no hit. legislative.

Others were not so surprised by the decision: this body of the European Parliament, to which citizens can send their complaints about breaches of EU law by different national governments, has traditionally been a ring for the Spanish brawl, and has the advantage that it sometimes makes it possible to turn simple citizen requests into big headlines in the press.

The commission, known by the acronym PETI, has for years been a treat for Spanish MEPs of different stripes (among other things, because Spaniards are among the European citizens with the most complaints).

And that has been maintained - or, according to his adversaries, has skyrocketed - during the Montserrat presidency.

"Use the Commission as a partisan tool in Spain," says Danish MEP Margrete Auken, spokesperson for the Green group in the body.

“This has been a trend for several years.

But now it has developed dramatically, "says Auken, who has been a member of the committee since 2007 and who this past summer sent an incendiary email to the president accusing her of being" killing "the" spirit "of the organ by fleeing from the consensus.

Cristina Maestre, MEP of the PSOE and vice president of the PETI, abounds: "Montserrat is using the commission to put its eye on the finger of the [Pedro Sánchez] government."

He gives as an example two citizen petitions against the management of the pandemic, presented by a lawyer named Sergio Santamaría Santigosa who also happened to be a former regional parliamentarian for the Catalan PP;

Their requests managed to enter debate, despite the fact that the commission's secretariat recommended not admitting them.

And finally they became the headline in some media, who spoke of an alleged investigation by the EU on the health management of Pedro Sánchez.

This same week, predictably tomorrow Tuesday, the commission chaired by Montserrat delves into two other thorny issues for the Spanish Government: Venezuela and ETA.

It will analyze, on the one hand, a citizen petition about the landing at the Madrid-Barajas airport of Delcy Rodríguez, vice president of Venezuela, and her meeting with the Minister and Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, an issue that caught on in the political battle at the beginning of the year, until the pandemic changed course;

on the other, an old petition on the unsolved murders of ETA will be studied.

This dates back to 2016 and has already been debated, but has returned to the agenda thanks to the vote of the European popular, the Renew liberals and the conservatives and reformists.

Since Montserrat presides over it, approximately one in five petitions debated in the committee has been about Spain.

The PP, however, replies with another fact: during the last times of the previous presidency, exercised by the Swedish liberal Cecilia Wikström, the flow of Spanish requests was even greater.

And it is that, in reality, Spanish citizens as a source of complaints to the EU is a true rarity that few manage to explain: Spain has broken records of petitions submitted: it accumulates 2,265 complaints to the PETI in the last 10 years, above Germany (2,245) and Italy (1,975), both with more population.

They all agree on this: "Spain is the champion of petitions," says veteran Latvian politician Tatjana ŽDanoka, also from Los Verdes and vice president of the commission.

"Spain has been our main client," adds Auken, in whose country, according to his account, no one is too interested in this body.

But he immediately returned to the charge: "The problem is the political bias of the president."

"Completely neutral"

Danoka emphasizes that the marriage between citizen complaints and national politics "is not something new" in the PETI.

In his opinion, skewed usage has been "pretty common" in the past.

"Now it's more intense," he says.

And he protests the "double standards" of Montserrat in the admission for processing of certain issues: they enter more easily when they have to do with Spain and put their political rivals in trouble, he maintains.

"I want it to be very clear: the presidency is completely neutral," Dolors Montserrat defends himself in a telephone conversation.

"I have always been fair."

And she points out that it is not she who makes the final decision.

“The presidency proposes.

Who decides which petitions are discussed are the coordinators [spokesmen for the political groups, who have to vote on the proposals], ”he explains.

Montserrat ensures that many votes are consensual.

"There is a large majority, unanimity and agreement," he says, adding that issues such as Venezuela are taken into account "because they violate European regulations [a decision of the European Council that prohibited the entry of certain Venezuelan politicians into EU territory]" .

The former PP minister explains what attracted her to the commission she presides over when she landed in Strasbourg, after years of fighting copper in national politics: Spain, she says, is one of the countries with the greatest “European feeling”, and the body she presides over “ about truly the European institutions to the citizens ”. The Socialists, however, denounce that it gives priority to Spanish issues. Thus, they affirm, the Germans led with 203 the number of citizen petitions presented in 2019, but so far only 25 have been seen; While of the Spanish, the second nationality with the most requests in 2019 (164), 45 have already been debated.