Ursula von der Leyen, descendant of a German family of aristocratic lineage, member of the European People's Party, former minister of Angela Merkel and president of the European Commission, came out this Wednesday in defense of extraordinary taxes on energy companies: "In times in which we live it cannot be that some extraordinary and unprecedented profits are obtained thanks to the war and at the expense of consumers.
Right now, the benefits need to be shared and channeled to those who need them most.”
Only 24 hours before these words by Von der Leyen, his Spanish co-religionist, the general secretary and parliamentary spokesperson for the PP, Cuca Gamarra, dismissed such arguments as demagogic: "The demagoguery of saying that this tax is going to go directly to protect to the weakest is false”.
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Taxes on energy and banking achieve broad support despite the no from the right
The PP, together with Vox and Ciudadanos, voted on Tuesday in Congress against the creation of these taxes, a measure backed by a large majority of 183 deputies.
In the debate, the closest thing to the speech of the president of the European Commission was heard among the spokesmen of the left, such as the socialist Patricia Blanquer: "Who can be against helping those who suffer the most at the expense of the benefits growing millionaires pocketing banks and energy derived precisely from the situation that is suffocating families?
Von der Leyen's words to defend some levies with which Brussels hopes to raise 140,000 million euros found the immediate support of another German conservative, this one of pure Bavarian stock.
Manfred Weber, president of the European People's Party, bluntly defended the Commission's initiative: “More must be done.
The markets are speculating against European solidarity when the winter will be really hot.
The Spanish PP has become a new Iberian exception, in this case within the continental right.
Theirs is another fight: to disdain any measure that contributes to fattening "Sánchez's box", a way of referring to the tax collection of the State that Gamarra used on Tuesday in Congress on no less than a dozen occasions.
"We will support everything that means lowering receipts for Spaniards and for them to pay less taxes, and we cannot support measures whose sole objective is that Mr. Sánchez's box has more money at its disposal," argued the general secretary of the PP when announcing its not the new taxes.
Despite the fact that the European Commission had already been leaning for days to intervene in the benefits of energy companies, the popular ones took refuge in Brussels to maintain just the opposite.
Gamarra announced the negative vote of his group to the new taxes, hours before the debate on Tuesday and after a few days of indecision, while asking the PSOE for a gesture: withdraw the proposal while waiting to know the "framework" set by Brussels.
This Wednesday, after learning of Von der Leyen's announcement, the PP spokeswoman delved into new plot twists: “They are not the same.
The Brussels rate is to reduce the receipts of Europeans and the Sánchez tax just to collect more.
The European Commission has only blessed the taxes on energy companies, not on banks, also included in the package promoted by PSOE and United We Can.
In this second case, the right maintains that it contradicts the criteria of the European Central Bank (ECB).
But the volleys of the popular have gone in block against both taxes.
On Tuesday, after Gamarra's announcement, his partner Mario Garcés, Treasury inspector and former Secretary of State for Social Services, went up to the congressional rostrum.
Where Brussels sees a way to prevent energy companies from profiting more at the expense of consumers, Garcés only saw a sample of "permanent and generalized fiscal felony."
The new taxes, argued the deputy, are the product of a "decadent thought", of the desire of the socialists for "a planned economy,
Before Von der Leyen spoke, this Wednesday there was a government control session in Congress, where Pedro Sánchez attacked Gamarra for opposing extraordinary taxes.
The president took the opportunity to insist on the thesis that he has been defending for weeks: "We govern for the majority and when you did, you put all the institutions at the service of a powerful minority."
Gamarra avoided going into the matter of taxes, and Sánchez gave him a conclusion: "The PP's program is that of the large energy companies in this country."
The popular also questioned the Third Vice President and Minister of Energy Transition, Teresa Ribera, regarding another matter blessed by Brussels: the "Iberian exception", the mechanism to limit the price of gas.
Deputy Juan Diego Requena launched against Ribera: "This is a scam and you are the scammer."
And not only that.
As the new mechanism has forced to import more liquefied gas from Russia, Requena made the vice president "responsible for financing Putin."
Ribera preferred to "ignore the insults" and dedicated himself to giving the figures that reveal that the system has facilitated the fall in prices in the wholesale and regulated markets.
The popular ones ignore this fact and cling to the fact that, on the contrary, it has caused increases in new free market contracts.
There is an objection to the proposal of the Government parties that is shared by its detractors and some of the groups that, despite everything, voted in favor of the initiative being admitted for processing: how can it be determined that the companies do not pass on this cost to the consumers.
In the Executive itself they recognize that the text needs important legal adjustments that will be introduced during the process of drafting the law.
Groups that voted in favor, such as the PNV, also announce substantive amendments.
The PP, at the moment, is on a different wave and is not even in tune with its European co-religionists.
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