Sánchez asks the employer to negotiate a salary agreement with the unions

Pedro Sánchez, at the closing of the XXVI Congress of the Socialist International.chema Moya Chema Moya (EFE)

Pedro Sánchez has once again demanded that Spanish businessmen reach an income agreement with the unions in a context marked by the economic and social consequences of the war in Ukraine.

His request, at the closing of the XXVI Congress of the Socialist International (IS) in which he has been named president, comes days after Antonio Garamendi has been re-elected as head of the employers' association.

And at a time when Spain is the second country in the EU with the lowest inflation (7.3%), below the average in the euro zone (10.7%) and only worse than France but still at very high levels.

“In Spain, thanks to the labor reform, approved by my Government and agreed with the social agents, we have made progress like never before in the last 40 years in terms of job stability and dignity.

We have placed collective bargaining at the center of labor relations.

That is why I ask the employers, the CEOE, to sit down with the unions to already reach a salary agreement that gives security to the workers ”, has requested the President of the Government and Secretary General of the PSOE.

Sánchez's proposal, which he has been demanding since spring, has been produced within his defense of "decent work" and "a fair economy that replaces the neoliberal model."

Social democracy, he has emphasized, should offer such an alternative model to "reactionary nationalism" and the

with which the EU responded to the Great Recession of 2008. "The redistribution of wealth is a matter of principles and values," he stressed after his election, without any other candidates, as president of an organization in a comatose state.

Founded in 1951 and made up of more than 130 socialist, social democratic and labor parties, Sánchez has set himself the task of relaunching an organization that has languished for decades and turning it into the "great common house of international socialism" and a "great ideological platform". that exploits the pull of its members.

Sánchez had not reserved three days in a row and full time for party affairs since the last Federal Congress of the PSOE, just over a year ago in Valencia.

The President of the Government has added "to the much work he has", as highlighted by his Socialist predecessor in La Moncloa, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a new and "great responsibility": to revive the SI, an organization with enormous potential and capacity to influence against the neoliberal model.

The election of Sánchez as president of the SI, the first Spanish, is the initial step to revive an entity that has been dormant for decades.

“We must strengthen an organization that must be heard and taken into account in the world and that unites all the socialist parties and organizations again.

The defense of multilateralism, in a world marked by predatory capitalism, is part of our DNA, and for this reason it is necessary to strengthen the link with the United Nations: this must be the forum to combat global threats.

Our internationalism is the best antidote against myopic and trench policies”, Sánchez stated at the closing of the SI Congress, which four decades later was held again in Madrid.

The event was attended by 14 ministers from the socialist part of the Government, the regional presidents of Asturias, Extremadura, Navarra and La Rioja and 12 general secretaries of the regional federations of the PSOE.

Proof of the complexity of the challenge is that the leader of the PSOE, who since his work in Brussels and Sarajevo in the 1990s has given great importance to international politics, is the attention that Sánchez has devoted to the SI Congress.

"He arrived first thing in the morning and left at the very end of the afternoon," different socialist cadres share.

The determined commitment to a "renewed pacifism based on international legality" and a response without delay but "with climate justice" to global warming due to pollution will be other flags under the mandate of the new head of the SI.

Sánchez, who has not made any allusion to the reductions in sentences for sexual offenders as a result of the entry into force of the

- the Government hopes that this week the Supreme Court will dictate the doctrine to follow - nor to the A demonstration that Vox had called at the same time in the Plaza de Colón, has called "to globalize climate justice, rights and freedoms."

“That globalization was ignored by those who led the world to disaster a decade ago and who privatized obscene profits and socialized losses.

Before them we must confront a social democratic alternative that is more international and more socialist than ever ”, he urged.

The new leader of the SI, a position previously held by the German Willy Brandt or the Portuguese António Guterres, has had the support of Zapatero as in other relevant moments since he arrived at La Moncloa.

“Today is a transcendent day, it is not that there is a new Socialist International, it is the Socialist International again, with all the historical strength and leadership that it has been able to transmit to the world”, stressed the former President of the Government.

Zapatero has implicitly pointed out that the SI that Sánchez intends to promote is not going through its best moment: “It has been the most important international political organization in the 20th century and it should be so in the 21st century.

It is our responsibility to build an international political community in the face of reactionary forces and insensitive to global problems.

The challenge that Sánchez faces is enormous: to revive an organism without a spark for decades.

The paralysis of the SI has reached such a point in recent years that a competitor has even emerged, the Progressive Alliance, of which more than 140 parties and organizations are a part, including the PSOE.

The inaction during the period of Yorgos Papandreou, president since 2006 —before his party, PASOK, succumbed to the impetus of Syriza and the harsh recipes of the EU in the Great Recession—, and of Luis Ayala, secretary general since 1989, ended up causing the departure of the SI of the German and Swedish Social Democrats.

One of Sánchez's first missions is for those parties to return, upset that the statutes of the organization were not respected,

according to which the president and the secretary general can only be elected for a maximum of eight years (two terms).

This Sunday the first signs of rapprochement were already seen in the good words that Lars Klingbeil, co-chairman of the SPD, dedicated to Sánchez in a video.

relay in the dome

The XXVI Congress of the SI has developed as the PSOE wanted.

But that doesn't mean it was easy.

Several European parties were reluctant, according to different socialist sources, to the continuity of Ayala, who will continue as SI High Commissioner and "special adviser" to Sánchez.

Papandreou will continue as honorary president.

"You are also essential in this new stage that is opening up," the PSOE leader praised them.

Ayala's successor as Secretary General will for the first time be an African woman, Benedicta Lasi (Ghana).

In Ferraz they were clear that it was necessary to "a 180º turn" in the leadership of the SI to lay the foundations to refloat the organization, but in Ferraz there was resistance to the replacement of Ayala.

The president of the SI Africa Committee, Bokary Treta from Mali,

In a letter presented to the organization in October, he defended "the formula of Pedro Sánchez as president and Luis Ayala as secretary general as the best chance of success" and his "unequivocal" support for the Chilean leader "because he is almost the only one who comes to [ see] us in Africa.”

He was no exception.

The Committee of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Caucasus also supported "unanimously" that Ayala remain as "a guarantor of stability" in another letter.

The Dominican Miguel Vargas, president of the Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean, also proposed Ayala in September for the general secretary "for a new period."

In the end, the change was possible without stridency thanks to the behind-the-scenes negotiations of Hana Jalloul, secretary of International Policy and Development Cooperation of the PSOE leadership, and her team.

The game of balances attending to the different regions and sensitivities was also key: for example, Janet Camilo, from the Dominican Republic,

The opening to sub-Saharan Africa with Lasi's bet has been another determining factor in the sudoku fit with which Sánchez hopes to reactivate the SI.

"You are already a symbol", he dedicated to the general secretary.

The first consequence of the renewal that has started is that half of the parties have caught up to pay the dues.

Otherwise they would not have been able to participate in the vote in which Sánchez has assumed the helm of an organization "with a lot of potential and influence" as shared in La Moncloa and the federal executive of the PSOE.

“We left this Congress with the will to bring together all those who defend and apply progressive ideas in the world.

It is more necessary than ever to have a powerful Socialist International”, summarized the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa,