It is a withering denial: the son of the Spanish Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, does not work on the Doñana file and, therefore, there is no conflict of interest despite the fact that he is employed by the General Directorate for the Environment of the European Union .
This is how categorically the European Commission has responded to the latest attack by a PP outraged by the repeated community warnings against the proposal for an Andalusian law to regularize illegal irrigation in the surroundings of the natural park.
This type of official denial is very unusual and constitutes a sign of the growing resentment and concern in Brussels in the face of political attacks that few would have expected from a party from a country with proven democratic credibility such as Spain.
nor of an internationally respected political group such as the European People's Party (EPP).
“This is manual anti-Europeanism”, warn those who thought they had already seen it all in the capital of the EU.
"Given the accusations against a Commission worker, we indicated that, in line with our procedures, the worker in question had revealed his personal situation in a 'conflict of interest declaration', indicated a spokesman for the European Executive in reference to Luis Planas Herrera.
The son of the Spanish Minister of Agriculture is an assistant in Brussels to the Commission's Director General for the Environment, Florika Fink-Hooijer, who is following the Doñana file and has issued repeated warnings to Spain to comply with the ruling on the park of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) of 2021.
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The PP surrenders to the clash with Brussels to save the Doñana controversy
On Thursday, the Councilor for the Presidency of the Board, Antonio Sanz, affirmed that the criticism of the Commissioner for the Environment - under whom Fink-Hooijer works -, Virginijus Sinkevičius, of the bill is explained because he is the son of Minister Planas who “does the papers and answers” on your behalf.
"Man, green and with handles! Everything is united," Sanz ironized.
The tasks entrusted to Planas son "take into account" his situation "to avoid any current or potential conflict of interest.
We can confirm that he has not been involved in the Doñana issue ”, settles the official response of the Commission, unusual for how fast and forceful he has been.
Despite the Commission's response, the leadership of the PP is reaffirmed in questioning the actions of the community institution with the file on Doñana, sowing doubts about the impartiality of the Commissioner for the Environment, just as the Junta de Andalucía did this Thursday.
"In what sense was the son of Luis Planas inhibited?" Ask official PP sources.
“The Commission has ruled in real time on a bill that has not yet been approved, only taken into consideration, and in a preventive manner.
In addition, the son of the Minister of Agriculture works there.
All this generates suspicions in us ”, insist the same sources.
In Alberto Núñez Feijóo's team they defend that, in any case, the criticism has been formulated by the Junta de Andalucía and not the national leadership of the PP, although they understand the doubts of their Andalusian party colleagues and support their criticism.
But Feijóo, they say, has not gone against the Commission in any case and has only supported Manfred Weber, leader of the PPE, in his questioning of the Environment Commissioner.
"The commissioners are not supreme pontiffs, you can disagree with them," emphasize PP sources.
Minister Planas has also responded to the controversy, calling the insinuations of the Councilor for the Presidency of the Board "base".
"That
number two
of the Andalusian Government, with absolute ignorance, knowing full well that he is lying, is capable of messing with a person who cannot defend himself because he has been a European civil servant by opposition for eight years […] an absolutely upright person and who has nothing to do with the file shows that the PP is desperate”, he said in an interview on TVE.
Before, Luis Planas emphasized: “The PP and Vox proposal is an illegal proposal, it goes against the sentence and the Water and Habitat framework directive and obviously against the position of the European Commission.
It is even illegal from the Spanish constitutional point of view, because it assumes jurisdiction over water that belongs to the State and not to the autonomous community […].
I think it is a real nonsense, I have described it on more than one occasion,
In an electoral act in A Coruña, Sánchez raised this Friday the position of the PP on Doñana to a symbol of what Spain "has to definitely leave behind".
Feijóo's party is "against everyone", "fighting with science, with the irrigators who have their irrigation legalized, with the European rulings and with the European Commission": "The serious thing is that they damage the reputation" of Spain, he stressed .
According to the President of the Government, the right is in the hands of "denialist politicians by action or omission": "They only have insults, disqualification, hoaxes and misinformation, there is no project," he assured, reports Sonia Vizoso
.
It is also the third time in three days that the Commission has to come out to defend itself against the attacks of European and Spanish conservatives.
Shortly after the leader of the PPE, Manfred Weber, accused Sinkevičius on Wednesday of putting on a "red shirt" to "campaign for [Pedro] Sánchez", the commissioner himself replied, in another unusual gesture, through the networks social: “The Commission acts as an impartial guardian of the Treaties and the implementation of the decisions of the CJEU [Court of Justice of the European Union] is a priority”.
In addition, he added, "Doñana is important for Spain and for the European Union."
Only 24 hours later, the spokesman for the Commission, Eric Mamer, came out assuring that the president of the institution, Ursula von der Leyen, from the same political family as Weber,
but very far from the course that it has taken in recent times, "it has confidence in all its commissioners."
A few neutral words, but which, for those who know how to read between the lines in a poker-faced Brussels, are sufficient proof of the weariness and anger that this dispute is causing.
"Frenzy Attack"
This "furious attack" is unusual and "totally irresponsible", warns the Galician MEP Ana Miranda (BNG), who does not hide her astonishment despite saying she is accustomed to the practices of the PP: she is vice-president of the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament, chaired by by the popular Dolors Montserrat, under constant accusations of manipulating the chamber for the interests of the PP and where Doñana has been the subject of discussion for several legislatures, he recalls.
This case "demonstrates a behavior that the owners of the European institutions believe," laments the parliamentarian affiliated with Los Verdes.
A concern shared by another veteran of Brussels, the MEP for Ciudadanos Soraya Rodríguez.
In the European Parliament, she says, there is a consensus of respect for the Commission as an institution: once a commissioner is appointed,
he is not attacked —except for a flagrant action by him— neither because of his in-laws nor because of his nationality.
"It's a red line," he stresses, which has now been crossed.
The European Commission is struggling to repel political attacks for its actions as "guardian of the treaties."
But these usually come from countries with governments whose democratic credentials are questioned, such as that of the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, whose diatribes against the von der Leyen team are already legendary.
What Brussels did not expect was the attack against its commissioners, workers and even the institution itself that the PPE, the majority in the Eurochamber, has undertaken in a coordinated manner, along with the Spanish PP.
A game that can be dangerous both for the credibility of the institutions and for an EPP that plays with fire, also warn MEPs such as the socialist Javi López, for whom the limits of the politically admissible debate are being exceeded.
"I've been here for a decade and I hadn't seen anything like it since Spain," says López.
“The only ones who have made this type of attack on the European Commission, institutional attacks and their officials, accusing them of politicization, are Europhobic and anti-system parties.
Orbán and the Polish government do these things, no one else.
This places the Spanish PP outside the European discussion perimeter ”, he adds.
And he warns that it can bring consequences, because the fight between the conservatives over Doñana "has already become a European issue."
Also Ernest Urtasun, from the European group of Los Verdes and with two legislatures behind him, considers the situation "unusual".
What worries him the most, he comments, is the fact that "the PPE is beginning to play the game of not respecting European laws or the role of the Commission as guarantor of European law, which is something that until now only the Orban and the Kaczynskis”.
It is, he warns, a "very worrying degradation of the EPP towards what is the European illiberal right: now they no longer only agree with them, but are beginning to use their own methods."
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