Spain in the EU: State of the arts
On March 8, 2023 INCIPE held the event entitled Spain in the EU: State of the arts. The session was attended by Pablo García-Berdoy, Permanent Representative of Spain to the European Union (2016-2021), who reviewed the different phases of Spain’s membership in the European Union. The meeting was presented by the ambassador and secretary general of INCIPE, Manuel Alabart. The presentation was followed by a round of questions moderated by the director of INCIPE, Vicente Garrido.
García-Berdoy begins by stating that there is a misunderstanding about the origin and nature of European integration that contributes to diluting the importance of this basic competence of the modern European State. The States, owners of the treaties, understand that the EU is the necessary sphere for making effective the policies that they used to decide separately and, now, jointly in a shared institutional framework of which they are the owners. The European process, therefore, is a fundamental part of the responsibility of government, a priority projection of the national sovereignty of the political mandate that the executive branch has received from its citizens. This vision of the state as co-owner of the process as a whole is the right vision.
While warning that the Union must adapt to the new times, García-Berdoy divides the history of Spain’s membership in the EU into four periods; beginning the first one with Spain’s entry into the European Communities and ending in 1999 with the confirmation of Spain’s membership in the euro zone from its inception. During this time, Spain had the highest growth rate in the OECD, but there were major imbalances in the Spanish economy, which forced four devaluations of the peseta and a very rigorous budgetary adjustment from 1996 onwards in order to comply with the criteria of the Maastricht Treaty. At the same time, the most important historical event after the signing of the Treaty of Rome took place, the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In the second stage, the beginning of the 21st century in the EU was marked by the preparation of the great enlargement, and in Spain, by a change in the preferential alliances. Iraq aside, Spain had found many points of coincidence with the United Kingdom, especially with regard to the development of the internal market. Enlargement required a refoundation that had already begun in Maastricht, and there were years of incessant intergovernmental negotiation after Amsterdam, Nice, the failed constitutional treaty and Lisbon. Spain, the smallest of the big ones, managed at first to secure its weight in the Council, but Lisbon reduced it with its double majority system in a Council with 25 and then 28 Member States. This second part ends with the euro crisis from 2008, when the new government wanted to return to Spain’s traditional European policy, to a friendlier relationship with the Commission and the Franco-German axis, a supposed European orthodoxy.
From 2008 to 2014, the EU lives its worst period; the management of survival (third stage for Spain). For García-Berdoy, Spain has not yet recovered from the 2008 crisis, its position in Europe and in the world is weaker than before that crisis. Regarding the fourth stage, it occurs in 2015 due to the beginning of the migration crisis that summer, awakening Germany from its uncomfortable role as ‘hegemon’. The massive arrival of migrants, mostly from Syria, unleashed a wave of populism in many European countries and an East-West confrontation over the different vision of European migration policy. In this fourth period, Brexit took place, a negotiation well conducted by the European Commission that dismantled the British myth of regained sovereignty, a somewhat delicate situation due to the bad news of the British exit.
Continuing with this last stage, Pablo García-Berdoy states that the covid crisis and the extraordinary European response with the approval in December 2020 of the Next Generation EU recovery fund could have closed this period brilliantly if the Russian invasion of Ukraine had not arrived. When the time comes to preside over the Council of the Union, Spain must open the debate on the insufficiency of funds for North Africa, as the stability of its environment and its relevance in the EU are at stake. In addition to the pandemic and the crisis in Ukraine, globalization, the China-US competition, the digital revolution, the crisis of multilateralism, the environmental challenge, etc., point to a gradual delegation of sovereign powers to the Union. But this delegation must respond to Spanish interests. In short, after these years of a maelstrom of integration, of enormous activity by the institutions, the outlook is an uncertain future for Spain as a Member State. And García-Berdoy considers that no one is more to blame for this than the Spaniards themselves.
As a result of the questions raised, the ambassador affirms that talks must be opened towards a neighbourhood policy, that the Ukraine or Moldova of today cannot enter into a rapid negotiation process for accession. Furthermore, the Brussels-UK agreement on Northern Ireland is beneficial, and the future Gibraltar-EU relationship is extremely important. For his part, the Secretary General of INCIPE Manuel Alabart concludes by stressing the opportunity for Spain to put on the table the relationship with Gibraltar and the neighbourhood policies.
