Pedro Sánchez welcomes EU commitment to climate neutrality by 2050

Brussels (Belgium)

Spain is thanked for "the successful organisation" of that conference in the conclusions text, thereby acknowledging the efforts required to get preparations ready in record time.

In his speech, Pedro Sánchez welcomed the fact that the European Union has mostly committed to the goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050 and said this is a major step towards ensuring that Europe continues to lead efforts by the international community to limit the global rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees on pre-industrial levels. The Acting President of the Government stressed that only one Member State expressed difficulties in reaching this goal and that a commitment was made to "do everything possible" to "bring them into line soon", he said.

In this regard, he highly valued the European Green Deal proposal presented by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to the European Parliament. The proposal sets a more ambitious emissions reduction target of between 50% and 55% by 2030. Pedro Sánchez also gave his support to the creation of a Fair Transition Fund, but also called for countries such as Spain that demonstrate greater climate ambition to be able to benefit from the fund. The President of the Government of Spain also believes the proposal to introduce a border carbon control mechanism is highly positive, as this will enable the competitiveness of European industry to be maintained over other trading partners less committed to the fight against climate change. It will also be another European resource capable of helping to finance the EU ecological transition.

At the Article 50 Council meeting held on Friday on Brexit, President Sánchez congratulated Boris Johnson on his victory and stressed that Spain will continue to work towards an orderly Brexit that guarantees the rights and freedoms of the people and offers economic certainty. "Spain is committed to the closest possible future relations between the European Union and the United Kingdom", he said.

Multi-annual Financial Framework

Negotiations on the Multi-annual Financial Framework are taking place under very tough circumstances given the withdrawal by the United Kingdom, as this represents the loss of 10 billion euros per year. The European Union needs resources to tackle new requirements, such as the fight against the climate emergency, digitalisation and migration, without forgetting the various conventional policies, such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Cohesion Policy. The Government of Spain defends the enormous modernising potential of these policies to tackle future challenges, such as sustainability and demographic imbalance. Therefore, Spain is committed to maintaining the total volume at 1.114% of the Gross National Income of the European Union.

Furthermore, the Government of Spain defended two specific proposals: the introduction of a Youth Guarantee to combat the poverty suffered by many children in Europe and Spain, in particular; and for the common budget to be tied to progress made on the European Union Social Rights Pillar on issues such as social dialogue, the minimum wage and benefits. Spain has the support of France, Portugal and Italy on this initiative.

Euro Summit

At the Euro Summit, President Sánchez highlighted the importance of making faster progress towards concluding the Monetary Union in the three areas of work that remain ongoing: reform of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM); conclusion of the Banking Union by creating the European Deposit Guarantee Scheme; and implementation of the Eurozone budget with sufficient resources and a broadly stabilising role. The President of the Government of Spain also underlined the need to harness the generally favourable economic growth in order to equip the Monetary Union with what it needs to tackle future crises.

Non official translation