The Alhambra summit, the most important event of the Spanish presidency of the EU, will bring together the leaders of 44 European countries in Granada in October of this year. Not only the 27 members of the EU will attend, but also another 17 members of the European Political Community (CPE) who do not belong to the community club. The Andalusian city will be invited by the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak; the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Ukrainian, Volodimir Zelenski.
The European Political Community (CPE) is a project launched on May 9 (Europe Day) by French President Emmanuel Macron with the aim of having a forum for political and security dialogue with those countries that are in line to join the EU (such as Turkey or Ukraine), do not want to join the Union (Switzerland or Norway) or have already left (United Kingdom). The Caucasian republics (such as Armenia and Azerbaijan, at war with each other) or those of the Western Balkans (including Kosovo, whose independence Spain does not recognize) form part of this large family, which poses an added diplomatic problem.
The CPE held its first summit on October 6 in Prague, coinciding with the Czech Presidency of the EU, and was dedicated to discussing the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis derived from it. The second summit will take place in Chisinau (Moldova), on June 1; and the third in Granada, on October 5. One day later, the informal European Council will be held in the same city, already limited to the 27 heads of state and government of the EU.
The head of Spanish diplomacy, Jose Manuel Albares, who appeared on Tuesday before the Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress, has confirmed that the CPE summit will be held in October in Spain, without offering further details. The minister has recognized that “maintaining the unity of the EU” in the face of a war in Ukraine, which is about to celebrate its first year and has no sign of de-escalation, is the greatest challenge for the Spanish Presidency of the Union, in the second semester of this year.
The minister, who has reviewed the multiple issues that concern his department, has defended the policy of understanding with Morocco and has attributed to the improvement of bilateral relations -after the turn of the Government on the Sahara conflict- the “disarticulation of six criminal and terrorist networks” in the last year and a half and the drop in arrivals of irregular immigrants to the coasts of Andalusia (69%) and the Canary Islands (80%), while the other Mediterranean routes “have skyrocketed”. He has not given a date, however, for the opening of the commercial customs of Ceuta and Melilla, limiting himself to ensuring that “there is a calendar to continue taking steps until the final opening” of the same.
Albares has expressed his “rejection” of the expulsion from Israel of the BNG MEP Ana Miranda, deported after arriving in Tel Aviv with a delegation from the European Parliament to visit the Palestinian territories and has assured that his department has asked the authorities for “explanations”. Israeli authorities and is in contact with the European Parliament.
Albares has also assured that Spain has suspended exports of military and police equipment to Peru after the self-coup by former President Castillo, which triggered a wave of violently repressed protests. “As soon as this situation of rupture began, of civil conflict, we stopped any export of military and police material, as we always do,” he said. Sources of Commerce pointed out to EL PAIS on the 10th that there was no formal embargo, but that requests for the sale of riot control material to that country were analyzed with a magnifying glass and none had been produced since 2020.
Albares has had a tough confrontation with the PP spokeswoman, Valentina Martinez, whom she has asked to “abandon this anti-Moroccan drift that they are slipping into” after she reproached him for having changed Spain’s traditional position on the Sahara “to nothing changed.”
