Scholz invites Sánchez to a strategy meeting of the German Government

2022-08-25T22:38:18.857Z

The Spanish president will participate next Tuesday in a meeting of the German Executive at the Meseberg Palace with the energy crisis as a background

Confrontation with the PP at home and a high international profile.

While the political battle with Alberto Núñez Feijóo rages over the decree on energy saving measures and the renewal of the Judiciary, the start of Pedro Sánchez's political course has a marked international component.

After the Council of Ministers on Tuesday, the president opened the political course with a trip to Colombia, Ecuador and Honduras that began this Wednesday in Bogotá, where he goes to support the progressive government of Gustavo Petro, who has just taken office.

The next chapter will also have a clear symbolism.

On Tuesday of next week, Sánchez has been invited by the German chancellor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, to a strategy meeting in which he has summoned his entire government to the Meseberg palace, about 70 kilometers from Berlin. ,

This is not a usual bilateral summit, since this will be held in October in Madrid, but rather a special invitation to which Scholz gives a lot of symbolism.

The previous participation of a European leader in a meeting of the German Government in Meseberg was in May, when the prime ministers of Sweden and Finland attended, as a clear gesture from Germany to two countries that have decided to apply for NATO membership in the face of the Russian threat .

The chancellor later appeared with them at the palace.

Meseberg was the usual place for the summits of the Franco-German axis between Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.

Also for Spain, this invitation from Scholz takes on special relevance at a very delicate moment for all of Europe and especially for Germany, the country most dependent on Russian gas and which fears more serious economic consequences this autumn and winter in the event of a possible closure of the tap of gas by Vladimir Putin.

It is a clear sign of confidence in Sánchez and his role in the EU, the sources consulted point out, in a context in which both countries, together with France, have promoted a large part of the European agenda in economic and security matters.

Sánchez has never abandoned his international agenda despite the fact that Spain is entering an electoral period, but now he is reinforcing it by thinking not only that the only way out of the energy crisis lies in major international agreements, but also in the Spanish presidency of the EU in the second quarter of 2023. In fact, the trip to Colombia, Ecuador and Bogotá also has the intention of convincing these presidents to attend the EU-CELAC summit that Sánchez has decided to organize in Spain during the EU presidency and that has not met since 2015. The objective of the Executive is to promote the EU's trade agreements with the region, stalled for years.

From the very beginning, Sánchez and Scholz have maintained a close relationship as the two most important presidents of European social democracy.

Sánchez saw the arrival of Scholz as a symbol of a change of cycle in the EU, after years in which he was, with the Portuguese António Costa, one of the very few social democratic leaders in a European Council dominated by conservatives and liberals.

The energy issue is not the only one that will be discussed at this meeting in Meseberg, but it will be one of the most important.

The German government is also interested in the Spanish national security strategy, for example, in addition to other issues.

European fiscal policy, with Germany prepared for huge public spending to deal with the crisis, will be another issue on the table.

The harmony between the two governments is notable after the announcement by Berlin, in favor of softening the fiscal rules in one of the most anticipated debates of the next political year.

A few months ago, Germany was tougher on the idea that the Stability Pact had to be maintained and spending and debt contained in countries that have less margin.

This is what Scholz said in Madrid in January.

But that was before the war.

The conflict has swept those ideas away and now both prime ministers are convinced that the only solution to Putin's challenge lies in more fiscal flexibility in a context of serious threat of recession in Germany, the European locomotive, which could lead to a continental crisis and that will affect Spain due to the commercial and industrial ties between the two economies.

A “decisive” gas pipeline for Germany

The energy crisis and the complicated autumn and winter that is approaching in the EU is the central issue in all the debates in Germany and in Spain.

The Scholz government is especially interested in promoting a gas pipeline from Spain, which France opposes, in order to seek alternatives to Russian gas and take advantage of the large regasification capacity in Spain.

Scholz has defended that the construction of a gas pipeline that would link Spain and Portugal with central Europe would be "decisive" for Germany and other countries.

In La Moncloa they welcome this support, as long as the gas pipeline is financed by the EU, has the support of France —the most difficult part, because the rejection is clear at the moment— and also is done with the technology so that it can transport hydrogen and not just gas, an energy that should be obsolete in a few years.

In March, Sánchez proposed to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the recovery of the MidCat project, through the Catalan Pyrenees, which would double the capacity to export gas to Europe.

If France rejects this project, the Spanish Executive will opt for the connection with Italy, Sánchez pointed out in Colombia.

The energy issue will also be the central axis of the Spanish-German summit to be held in Madrid in October after a seven-year hiatus.

Scholz, who already visited La Moncloa in January and attended the NATO summit in Madrid in June, now invites Sánchez to Germany and in October he will return to the Spanish capital with a large part of his tricolor government (social democrats, liberals and greens) to co-chair a summit with Sánchez that had not been repeated since her predecessor, Angela Merkel, received Mariano Rajoy in Berlin in August 2015.

50% off