An amnesty law for Catalan separatists, questionable statements on Kosovo, internal political agendas at EU level: the high expectations that many people had for the Spanish Presidency quickly evaporated.
Five minutes, no more: that was the time that European ministers dedicated on Wednesday, in Brussels, to the agenda item of introducing Basque, Galician and Catalan as official EU languages. None of the ministers spoke about it. Pascual Navarro Ríos, Spanish Secretary of State for European Affairs, chaired the meeting and presented the current situation. That’s about it.
Spain’s three regional languages will almost certainly never become official EU languages. Of course, Pedro Sánchez, the current Prime Minister who will begin his second term on Thursday, knows this very well. But, to achieve a government majority with small parties from these three regions, he gave in to this unrealistic special request.
This did not go down well in Brussels. One EU ambassador after another, speaking to our correspondents, made it clear, in a more or less undiplomatic way, that it is certainly not appropriate for a country holding the EU presidency to make domestic political issues the topic of Council meetings. . But good: it wasn’t very serious, so Sánchez was pardoned.