The second vice-president, Yolanda Díaz, together with MEP Ernest Urtasun (left) and adviser Carlos Corrochano, this Wednesday at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid Mariscal (EFE)
Two days after the one-year anniversary of the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Yolanda Díaz this Wednesday defended that Europe must “make new diplomatic efforts” to end the conflict. In an extensive article for the French magazine Le Grand Continent, which she presented in the afternoon at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, the second vice-president addresses a sensitive issue of the governing coalition, which fell into a deep crisis in March, when the executive of Pedro Sánchez decided to send arms to the government of Volodimir Zelenski in the face of direct opposition from Podemos. The Labor leader, who once supported the President’s decision, advocates an “autonomous reading” of the US on security and rules out that the solution would involve major investments in weapons. Just this morning Defense Secretary Margarita Robles confirmed the delivery of six refurbished Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Accompanied by MEP Ernest Urtasun, one of the profiles that form the central nucleus of Sumar, the political project she promotes in the face of the generals, and international political adviser Carlos Corrochano, Díaz has defended a transformative Europeanism, an “emancipatory project” for the EU with new fiscal rules that is green, feminist and focuses on labor rights.
“European citizens should not and cannot forever rely on American security guarantees. We need, we need, an autonomous reading of the world,” emphasizes the Vice President in her article. “As long as we depend on the United States for our security, we will not have autonomy to decide and organize our own role vis-à-vis China, for example,” he says in the text published under the title “Transforming Europe to protect the”. People. “We must shift this responsibility from an unstable NATO to a democratically controlled European security area,” asks the Vice President. “We don’t need to spend more on defense, but rather more coordination in spending, joint purchases and investment programs,” he says.
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In his article, Díaz stresses that Europe must lead “a new diplomatic effort, aligned with the aspirations of Ukrainian citizens,” which will “increase” humanitarian aid and “devise” a recovery plan for the country that is “based on aid, not on credit based”.
The vice president did not go into any of these details during her speech this Wednesday, but stressed the illegal nature of the invasion and, in line with Pope Francis and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, called for “a peace just and lasting.” “We need a Europe with an autonomous project in economic, fiscal and security terms. A strong Europe, which has an impact on European citizenship and serves to transform people’s lives,” he stressed in his speech.
“Transformative Europeanism”
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This Wednesday, the vice-president outlined the lines of her “emancipatory project”, a “transformative Europeanism that wants to protect ordinary people and the planet”, as described in the text.
“To speak of a transformative Europeanism means to speak of a new social contract at European level and a gradual and ambitious reform program,” says Díaz, before listing the axes of this transformation: work, green, feminist, democratic, with fair taxation, multilateral and for human rights. Among her proposals, the vice-president calls for the renewal of the treaties (“putting them at the service of working people”), full legislative powers for the European Parliament and improving the method of electing the European Commission and change some paradigms, such as B. the “agility of decision-making”.
In the full build up of Sumar, Díaz has finished his speech appealing to the need to build a European political alternative. “I am in favor of Europe also being added (…). Let’s think big, especially because the Orbanes exist and we want a hopeful future for our children,” he warned. In the published text, the vice president alludes to “duty”. “to build a new political movement at European level and with a transversal vocation that unites and inspires the greens, left and progressives of very different traditions and origins, feminisms, civic movements and the trade union world” to articulate “broad blocs and consensus”, Reshaping Europe “in an ecological and social key”.