Spain’s new party of the left, Podemos, which won a stunning 20 per cent of the vote in the recent elections making it ‘kingmaker’ in on-going coalition negotiations, has condemned David Cameron’s renegotiation and called on the country’s interim government to veto them.
Addressing the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Spanish Parliament, Pablo Iglesias, the party’s leader, attacked the Cameron proposals in the strongest possible terms as ‘blackmail’ which risked ‘destroying Europe’. He said:
“Cave in today to Cameron, cave in to his blackmail. We’ll see what we do next year when the blackmail comes from Marine Le Pen. You will be destroying Europe.
“We need to defend the interests of both Spaniards and Europeans. [Cameron’s reforms are] blackmail, an imposition on the EU. It is an interpretation of the treaties that seeks to compromise the very possibility of working towards the construction of a more social Europe.
“The interim [Spanish] government shouldn’t compromise Spain’s future, because compromising the future of the EU is compromising Spain’s future.
“What an indignity this is. A Europe so tough with the weak, and so weak with the powerful.
“We need a Europe of welfare and solidarity against that of austerity and financial institutions.”
Another Europe Is Possible immediately welcomed the position of Podemos. Luke Cooper, the campaign convenor and an academic at Anglia Ruskin University, said:
“Unlike Britain Stronger in Europe we oppose David Cameron’s demands for renegotiation. His attacks on EU migrant workers’ rights, his desire to shield the City of London from Europe-wide regulation, and to make it even harder to clamp down on corporate tax avoidance, are not being undertaken in our name. We stand with Podemos against Tory Britain and for a social Europe.”
18th February 2016