Dolors Montserrat will be the general secretary of the European PP | Spain

The leader of the European Popular Party (PPE), Manfred Weber, announced on Wednesday His intention to nominate the head of the Spanish delegation of the PP of the European Parliament, Dolors Montserrat, as the next general secretary of European Formation. « With its modern, active and political strength, Dolors Montserrat, who has made a brilliant campaign at the local, regional, national and European level, will be my proposed candidate for the general secretary of the PPE party, » said the German on social networks. The appointment for confirmation will be the annual congress that the PPE will celebrate in Valencia on April 29 and 30.

Weber’s announcement occurs on the same day that the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez-Feijóo, is located in Brussels, just on the day when the EU must approve its first response to tariffs imposed by the United States. The Spanish conservative leader plans to meet with the president of the European Commission, also the conservative Ursula von der Leyen, as well as with the Commissioner of Defense and Space, Andrius Kubilius, and her couple of commerce, Maros Sefcovic, as the training has advanced from Madrid.

Feijóo and Weber will also meet, to discuss, among others, the Valencian Congress that the German refused to change the place despite the attempts of a PP concerned about the impact that the crisis around the crisis may have on the appointment to the management of the DANA of the President Valenciano, the popular Carlos Mazón, and potential protests during the European conservative event. Although being Secretary General is a position with little political power, the Montserrat nomination is a public support of Weber to the Spanish PP, the third force in number of PPE Eurodiputs (the first Eurocamara group) in Brussels after the German CDU-CSU and the Poles Conservatives, although these come from various parties, while the 22 Spanish Eurodiputs are all of the PP.

The Catalan, who is in her second term in Brussels, is the ram of the PP policy against the Pedro Sánchez government before the European institutions, where she has not hesitated to recurrently denounced the policies and laws of Madrid. It is also common for the hemicycle gallery to use in European plenary to cry out « Sanchismo. » Formation sources indicate that Montserrat will combine its new functions with its Eurodiputada seat and its head of the PP delegation in Brussels. If it is confirmed in the position proposed by Weber, the Spanish will replace in the General Secretariat of the PPE to the Greek Thanasis Bakolas, who since he assumed this position in 2022, of little political weight, has maintained very tense relations with the German.

The Spanish PP is also responsible for the origin of the nickname that circulates in Brussels on the increasingly common alliance of the PPE with the forces of the extreme right to carry out initiatives ignoring the rest of the proeuropeas forces, the « majority Venezuela »: the first alliance of European conservatives with the most ultras of the Eurocamara was to approve a resolution on Venezuela that promoted the Spanish PP in September of last year.

The PPE agreements with the ECR ultras of Giorgia Meloni and, even, with the patriots of Víktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen and Vox have caused strong discomfort within the European Conservative Group itself. Although it is very difficult for someone to openly criticize Weber’s strategy, cupcakes conservative from countries with a strict sanitary cord, from some Germans to the Poles of Donald Tusk do not hide their concern for this drift. Nor did he like in many the closed opposition led by the PP against the Spanish candidate for the commission, the socialist Teresa Ribera, during the process of parliamentary audiences at the end of last year, which prolonged the process and put into play the formation of a team of commissioners widely dominated by the PPE and led, in addition, by one of theirs, von der Leyen.