A "well-played" plan: the Spanish socialists lead the EU laws on Ecological Transition in the European Parliament

The important laws that the EU has pending on the environment, energy and biodiversity are having an unusual Spanish footprint in the European Parliament, one of the institutions that, together with the Council of the EU and the Commission, is key to approving laws through the codecision system. In addition to being Spanish, they are European parliamentarians from the PSOE, which at the beginning of the European legislature in 2019 deployed a strategy to place its members – among the 705 that the European Parliament has in total – at the forefront of the negotiations on matters related to the Ecological Transition. keys in Brussels and also for the Spanish Government. Its fruits are being reaped now, in a framework in which those same Spanish socialists will negotiate on behalf of Parliament the laws to protect nature or reform the electricity market with the semi-annual representative of the Environment and Energy Council, who is none other than the third vice president, Teresa Ribera.

“They played it well,” say sources from another party in the European Parliament to summarize an answer to the question of how it is possible that so many MEPs from the same party and from the same country have ended up taking charge of important issues and, furthermore, especially important for their national government, which happens to be of the same color.

“We have made a very strong team and we have been attentive to all the Green Pact dossiers,” they explain in the parliamentary group.. In Madrid, sources from the Executive attribute “all the merit” to the role “of the people of Brussels”, although they also slip that the importance that the acting president, Pedro Sánchez, gives to the ecological transition is well known there and they do not deny either. that Ribera has contributed to a plan that began years ago and that necessarily links the socialists here and there.

Biodiversity, electricity and pollution

The profuse Spanish presence in key dossiers for the EU at the moment became very clear this week. The Plenary Session of the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg finally approved its negotiating mandate for the Air Quality Directive and the reform of the electricity market. Defending them and guiding the vote, MEPs Javi López and Nicolás González Casares.

A few months ago and with much more difficulty, the former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE and today MEP, César Luena, also claimed victory in the European chamber, after winning a tight vote in which the mandate to negotiate the controversial directive with the Council was approved. of Nature Restoration, which has left governments and MEPs almost divided in two between those who see it as essential to continue advancing in the Green Agenda and those who ask for it to be stopped or slowed down, either by defending the agricultural sector or by links with the most polluting industries.

In the three cases, López, González and Luena were “speakers” of their respective issues in the European Parliament, so they have been responsible for writing the reports based on the proposal of the European Commission – with the prior work of information and meetings with all the actors involved – and negotiate to forge a majority later among MEPs, not only from different political groups, but also among different national delegations within them. In addition, González was also a “shadow rapporteur” or alternative for the Renewables directive that also obtained this week the definitive mandate of the European Parliament, also with a crucial role in achieving agreement between the political groups.

Last year, the Spanish socialist Ibán Blanco was also a shadow speaker for the directive on Artificial Intelligence and his colleague Isabel García, representative of all socialists in the European Parliament in the dossier for FuelEU regulations on the decarbonization of maritime transport.

Work since 2019

This ubiquity in matters relating to the same area of importance that the EU gives to those related to the ecological transition by deputies from the same country and political party is neither common nor coincidental and responds to a strategy that began to be deployed at the beginning of the European legislature -2019- and which combines the specific weight of the socialists in the European Chamber, that of the Government on these issues within the EU and also a much more persevering work of the PSOE delegation in the Brussels Chamber, that Vice President Ribera has not neglected during her visits to the community capital.

Without all these aspects, the objective fact that, with 21 MEPs, the PSOE is currently the largest delegation of the social democratic family in the European Parliament – grouped in the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, which, in fact, chaired by Iratxe García-, although, at the same time, this is a key element so that the strategy that has ended up putting the Spanish socialists in charge of environmental and energy issues could begin to be deployed successfully.

It all begins with the distribution of the work of the European Parliament at the beginning of each legislature, in this case, in 2019. Then, the presidents of each political group make an initial distribution of the different legislative projects and other issues, which fall on one or the other depending on the MEPs that each one has achieved in the elections.

Not all legislative texts or initiatives have the same importance and some have more weight than others and are not distributed equally.. Each is assigned a number of points to gauge its value.. Thus, a directive in which Parliament is co-legislator with the Council is worth more than a simple parliamentary initiative, as issues related to industry or fundamental rights and, also in this legislature, those related to energy or the environment have more weight.. In this case, parliamentary sources affirm that what happens is that groups or delegations 'let pass' certain issues, even if they are important, to gain in the distribution of others that are more of interest to them and that this is what in matters of the Pact Green is what the Spanish socialists will have done.

In addition to this distribution at the top – in the Conference of Presidents, the equivalent of the Congress Board -, other individual and collective 'games of thrones' also begin at the beginning of each legislature.. On the one hand, each MEP must move to be in charge of issues of their choice and integrate the different parliamentary commissions, where the dossier that has been assigned to a certain party must be entrusted to the MEP of a certain national delegation.. “A nuclear dossier is normal for a French person to fall into,” the sources explain, in the same way that industrial issues historically were left to the Germans.. In Spain, Ciudadanos stormed the Eucarámara with Maite Pagazaurtundúa at the forefront pursuing the issues that were most important to them, about civil liberties, terrorism or hate crimes. It is also important that the MEP who is interested in a particular issue is a recognized voice on the matter or the decision by the group presidents of which commission is in charge of a certain issue.. For example, the Nature Restoration law was about to 'fall' in the Agriculture commission, from which it would surely have welcomed a less environmentalist mandate than the one that came from the hand of Luena from the Environment commission, where finally landed.

“Spain has asserted itself,” they say in the European Parliament about the accumulation of legislative projects related to the Ministry of Ecological Transition, one of the heavyweights of the Spanish Government, with the rank of vice-presidency, with Ribera at the head.. To pay for the efforts of the Spanish socialists in Parliament, the vice president tries to hold meetings with European social democrats – also of other nationalities – whenever she goes to Brussels.

Spanish Presidency

As a culmination of this work for years, Parliament has left the four laws related to the Ecological Transition 'viewed for sentencing' in which López, Luena and González were involved just during the Spanish Presidency of the EU, which will end in December. Until then, if all goes well, it will be Ribera herself, as semi-annual president of the Environment and Energy Councils, who will sit down to negotiate with them on behalf of the Council.. Each one must defend the position of the institution they represent and the two parties – which, in reality, are the same – have already seen their expectations lowered in two of the issues.. The positions of both Parliament and the Council on the Nature Restoration law are less ambitious than the Government would have liked and everything indicates that it will also be the same in the reform of the electricity market, because the European Parliament has already left important issues behind. Spanish demands. However, it is unlikely that they will produce “dog-face” negotiations, as the Spanish socialist Juan Fernando López Aguilar called them, when in 2021 he negotiated with governments the creation of the Covid Passport.

“Of course I have it, but I have been aligned with Teresa Ribera's criteria before,” González stated in an interview with this newspaper, before the trilogue on the electricity market, although not everything will be valid in the negotiation with the vice president.. “Okay, there is affinity, but there will be things on which we cannot agree because I will have to defend the position of the European Parliament and her, the Council of the EU. Sparks will surely fly at some point.”