Spanish Presidency 2023: A strategic agenda for Europe

On July 1 Spain assumed the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union for the second semester of 2023. The most remarkable aspect of this Presidency is probably something that had not occurred to anyone until a few weeks ago: the calling of general elections in Spain on July 23, 2023. 

This fact, combined with an increasingly polarized landscape, has changed the perception of the Spanish semester. Polarization is also happening between the 3 major political families in the EU – EPP (European People’s Party), S&D (Socialists and Democrats) and Renew Europe – that have traditionally shared the principles, priorities and the EU agenda on legislation and integration, as revealed by the lack of consensus whilst debating the Nature Restoration law, a core law of the European Green Deal. 

These tensions foreshadow the battle that will be waged when renewing the European institutions and electing their highest leaders following the European elections in June 2024, which bode a contest that could undermine confidence in Ursula Von der Leyen within her political family, the EPP, now without the figurehead of Angela Merkel. 

Polarization is also happening between the 3 major political families in the EU  

Hence the particular importance of the Spanish Presidency. Not only does it occupy the last complete semester of the 2019-24 legislative period, but the outcome of Spain’s general elections could also accelerate the decomposition of the PPE-S&D-Renew trio, possibly leading to other types of coalitions including the ultra-conservative ERC (European Conservatives and Reformists), a group to which the Spanish party Vox belongs, Meloni’s Frattelli d’Italia and the Finnish Party – currently in Finland’s government coalition – or even the Identity and Democracy group. 

In both instances, the groups are incompatible with pursuing a European agenda based on sustainable growth, the fight against climate change, and safeguarding the environment and biodiversity; equality and cohesion; and the European construction of integration policies still pending such as the banking union, stock exchange union and energy union, that enable progress towards political union to continue after the major developments achieved during Von der Leyen’s five-year mandate, including the EU NextGeneration funds and the historic issue of Eurobonds. 

The anxiety and even astonishment prompted by this pan-European tendency, which could accelerate depending on Spain’s election results, have sidelined the semester’s agenda and brought the debate that scheduled to start after the European elections in June 2024 forward by six months. 

The agenda of Spain’s EU presidency  

The agenda of Spain’s presidency has been presented in a variety of ways, the most commonplace of which is based on four main priorities:  

• Reindustrialize the EU and safeguard its open, strategic self-reliance. 
• Pursue the green shift and environmental protection. 
• Foster greater social and economic justice. 
• Bolster European unity.  

Whatever the scenario, the Spanish presidency will liaise between Europe’s institutions and governments, comitology machinery and trialogues in Brussels with the professionalism and technical efficiency demonstrated on previous occasions. There is no doubt about this. However, it is too early to predict possible changes in the priorities and co-ordination of the presidency in office. 

For a more thorough review of the agenda of the semester, the study conducted by the Real Instituto Elcano Un decálogo de cara a la Presidencia española del Consejo de la UE 2023, which summarizes its aims very well as “a country project” can be used as a basis. 

These aims, with a few comments by me, are:  

• Advance with the Open Strategic Autonomy to prepare the EU for strategic and geopolitical challenges and consolidate a robust European stance vis-à-vis US-China rivalry. 
• Complete the Strategic Compass in the realms of security and defense. 
• Focus the Migration and Asylum Pact on training and education in the country of origin of essential immigration, bolstering the human rights and gender equality agenda. 

• Conclude the unfinished key dossiers of the EU Green Deal. 
• Advance towards the Energy Union (overhaul of the electricity market and interconnections) and consolidate energy and climate diplomacy in Latin America and southern neighbors. 
• Promote a European industrial policy that reinforces economic security focused on technological development (AI and open legislative digital packages as a unique EU identifier, data protection and cyber resilience, and also quantum computing, chips, RepowerEU and biotechnology) and bolster the single market. The latter requires an overhaul of the fiscal rules of the Stability and Growth Pact to enable borrowing sustainability to be combined with investment capacity to prevent each Member State from investing or providing grants differently from the others depending on its fiscal capacity. This is in addition to the creation of an EU sovereign investment fund or instrument to pursue the work started by NextGenerationEU. 
• Maintain the 27’s support for Ukraine and even start negotiations for joining the EU while bolstering the presence in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe with realistic approaches to enlargement. Likewise, progress must be made on European integration but without starting complicated procedures – such as treaty reform – if there is no guarantee of success. 
• Reboot traction in the relationship with LatAm, with the Mercosur agreement on one hand and the relationship between the two regions on the other. This must be done on a level playing field, overcoming extractive, asymmetric outlooks in order to seize the development opportunities that each party can foster in the other, which means taking advantage of the EU-CELAC summit scheduled for July. 

It is particularly important to emphasize that, as regards rights and equality, the Spanish presidency “will focus on concluding negotiations with the European Parliament about the proposals regarding environmental protection, the recovery of assets and confiscation, combating violence against women and domestic violence, and preventing and combating human trafficking”, furthering the directive about violence against women and domestic violence, the first EU law specifically about this issue. 

Spain’s viewpoint regarding Open Strategic Autonomy  

As regards Open, Strategic Self-Reliance – the main political and conceptual priority underlying the Presidency, aimed at profoundly conditioning the future of the Union – Spain must finalize the first official text at the Granada summit to avoid Europe having to respond reactively to external events in the near future (events such as Covid or the invasion of Ukraine) and enabling it to stay ahead. To this end, the Spanish government is working on three lines: 

• Increased strategic capacity, specifying the areas in which minimum industrial production levels must be established and with which industrial and innovation policies, its place in the single market and the extent of European integration. 

• How the increase in strategic capacities can be combined with the ecological and energy transition, highlighting ideas such as circularity. This includes exemplary, model Spanish industries, such as the steel industry, making it possible to reduce the import of strategic materials from third countries. 
• Self-reliance combined with greater strategic openness, recurring to traditional debates such as the renovation of multilateral institutional architecture and the role of the EU, with a view to enhancing its ability to respond to vulnerabilities. 

In short, an ambitious, strategic agenda at a transcendental time, as becomes a pro-European country committed to European values, the values that ultimately explain the abysmal differences in favor of European society vis-à-vis the rest of the world which is, once again, approaching crucial crossroads.