Soraya Rodríguez: "The way in which the Spanish Government has sold the European Recovery Fund worries me"

Soraya Rodríguez Ramos is a lawyer, with a degree in law from the University of Valladolid and Spanish politics, and a member of the European Parliament for Renew Europe in the Ciudadanos' Europe Delegation, elected in the elections of 26 May 2019. Until the dissolution of the Cortes Generales in 2019, she was a member of the PSOE in the Congress of Deputies and President of the Joint Commission for the European Union. Spanish politics has reviewed European Community news on the programme of Atalayar on Capital Radio.

How do you assess, with the appearance of the new variation of the virus, the fact that the United Kingdom is isolated on the days when they have voluntarily decided to isolate themselves because of "Brexit"

It's like no paradox, I also had the feeling today that this closure, this "lockdown", once again makes us feel closer too, because there are so many British people living in Spain or Spanish people living in the UK or studying or working there... Brexit came out ahead because of the first "Fake News" campaigns. We are much closer to the United Kingdom and the European Union even at a very sad time such as not being able to reach an agreement to deal with our relations after the departure, even at this time when it seems that it is physically impossible to communicate the island with the continent. In this sense, I would also like to think about how close we are to family and friends thanks to WhatsApp, and this type of digital platform, with people who were going to come, people who were going to fly and cannot; because it unites us much more than it separates us and the reality is that the economic integration of the United Kingdom with the European Union was enormous. Brexit is a real madness and a game in which nobody wins, everybody loses a lot; more United Kingdom, but also the European Union that loses that part of economic integration, but also political integration. It was one of the saddest moments of the year, that formal exit from the Parliament, many MEPs crying, because there is a good part of British politics and its citizens that feel the European Union as their own. 

Brussels and London are still negotiating this mechanism for the adoption of trade measures once the exit has been officially completed. How will it end? Is there any way of thinking that an agreement can be reached "in extremis"

I believe that an agreement will be reached. We have been saying this for all these past months, but really the solution of a non-agreement is crazy. The British government and let's say the hard side of Brexit, the Conservatives, have to understand that this is it, the way out has been made and an economic agreement is necessary to regulate our future relations. Without them it is impossible, we are very dependent on the United Kingdom and if it is already very important for Spain to have this agreement or to be able to regulate our relations, imagine it for the United Kingdom because for them it is the relationship with 27 countries. If for Spain our relationship with the United Kingdom is an element of enormous economic distortion, imagine for the British with 27 Member States. We therefore need to find a good basis for a good agreement and regulate our relations for the future.

I wanted to take this opportunity to ask you about the great news this week in Europe following the approval by the Medicines Agency of the Pfizer vaccine and the logistical operation that is now being set up in Europe. Do you also have the feeling that Germany had to arrive and punch the table so that Europe could be revived and not miss the vaccination train?

I don't agree with that. I'm in the Environment Committee, which is where Health is, and we've had a lot of meetings with both the Commissioner and the Directorate-General, so let's just say we've experienced the process very closely and I don't have that feeling. It's true that at the last moment there was some nervousness when the United Kingdom took advantage of this to send a political message that they had begun to vaccinate before the European Union. With a campaign that the government itself needed because they had to tell the British people something, that there is something good after Brexit, and with this terrible economic, social and health mess that they have, there was a lot of marketing and a lot of need to send a political message. Having said that, the European Union has acted well, we have acted together in an area where we have no competence, which is health. Now that the first moments of the arrival of the COVID have been removed, and that terrible situation of lack of supply that occurred in many European countries, in Spain we all lived through it and there was a great deal of confusion and lack of coordination. In the European Union, the Commission has acted by trying to coordinate the work of the 27 in an area in which we have no competence, and in this sense I believe that acting jointly to make pre-purchases in the different laboratories that were researching the vaccine, then making joint purchases and obtaining authorisation from the single European Medicines Agency, with all States refusing to use the system of emergency authorisation by their rational health authorities, is a good way of behaving. We were also close to the European Medicines Agency, which has always been acting according to scientific and technical criteria without responding to political times, and this is the best message for citizens because the best vaccination strategy is for people to be vaccinated and people are going to be vaccinated when they have confidence in a vaccine that is absolutely safe and I really believe in this. At the last moment Germany, which at no time was going to use the urgent procedure, said it can, but the Medicines Agency today authorises a vaccine because all the safety requirements for authorisation have been met and the vaccine is safe and this is very positive and I also believe that Europe has acted well.

And now the economic recovery, do you think that after the approval of the budget, if the vaccination process is successful, this will also have an impact on the mood and economic recovery

It should, Europe, this week already with the authorisation of the vaccine and on Friday already with the final approval, can give the final kick off to this recovery plan. This is the best response that Europe could have been expected to make in order to tackle now the terrible economic and social consequences of this pandemic. The European Union's response is unprecedented; it is the biggest commitment to a European fund that we could ever have imagined. Remember 2008, which is a recent year, we are going to get into debt together, this was unimaginable a year ago. A year and a half ago, if we had talked about all of us going to the market together to get into debt, and with that debt to make investments in the 27 countries, we would have said that this is still not mature in Europe. And that is what we are going to do, and with a very significant amount of money, Europe's responsibility has now been fulfilled. If we do not properly understand how we should use this money, we may lose an opportunity, and with the rates of collapse of our economy we should not do so. This is not about aid to the economy, it is about investments to transform our economic system and the part of the grant that is not a loan is subject to conditions because they have to respond to projects in the field of digitisation, in the field of environmental transformation, in the field of education, to projects that can transform our economy. How the Spanish Government has sold the European  Recovery Fund worries me and worries me. I believe that the right messages are not being sent and the right actions are not being taken. There should be a big working table between all the administrations involved in this country, but also all the companies, the SMEs need this Fund. And to announce the Fund with events, as has been done, with an enormous figure like the one that is coming for Spain, the 140,000 million for Spain, is not good at all, it is good because the money is coming, but it marks the dimension of our misfortune. We are the second country to receive these funds because we are the second most damaged country, therefore we have more responsibility. But Europe has delivered, and that is good news. 

SMEs and the self-employed have not had the opportunity to channel projects anywhere to try and contribute to and create job

Let's look at the projects, the deadline for their completion. The deadline for submitting projects for that part of the Recovery Fund is 30 April. The Spanish Government is presenting it; given that such a large amount of money is involved and that 70% has to be absorbed and managed in the first two years and 30% from 2023 onwards, we must have very good projects that transform the productive system and we must also have very agile structures for implementation. Many people in Spain have the feeling that there should be many more structures so that this project that you have just talked about, for example, is already on the table so that it is already being discussed, studied, negotiated and seen to be valued and ready to be sent to the Commission.

One of the big issues last week in the European Parliament was the awarding of the Sakharov prize, the Belarusian opposition has deservedly won this prize for the democratic struggle after those completely fraudulent elections held by Lukashenko. Is democracy always at the end of these roads to freedom

Yes, clearly Belarusian society is fighting for democracy in its country. They want to be able to hold fair, clean and peaceful elections. They want democracy to be restored to their country. I remember the first time when the elections were held, the brutal repression began and representatives of the Human Rights Organisation in Belarus said to us: look, we are suffering the worst repression in Belarus since the Nazi invasion. They told us and we saw things that were happening there in the Centre for Isolation of Criminals, known as the TsIP, a detention centre comparable to the worst dictatorships we have experienced. The truth is that we are actually there, they are Europeans, they are on the other side of the border and they are risking their lives to put an end to what we call the "last dictator of Europe" and to fight for democracy. This democracy that we enjoy here, in Europe, in democratic countries; and sometimes we mistreat it and do not appreciate it as much as we should. But here, next to us, there are mothers at night outside police stations and hospitals looking for their children. Children who are being tortured because they were at a demonstration demanding the end of the dictatorship. The Sakharov Prize award ceremony was truly moving.

Furthermore, that this is an unacceptable situation, although Putin must be confronted, should more consistent sanctions be imposed

With Belarus we imposed individual sanctions on both Lukashenko and his son Viktor and on thirteen senior members of the regime. It is true that it took us some time, four weeks, because we needed unanimity to impose the sanction and, in short, we should break this rule of unanimity and put in place that of the majority, but in this sense there is not only Belarus, there is also Turkey, and I believe that this year also ends with good news in Parliament, During the last legislature we have been very intensely involved in this law that we call the Magnitsky law, which is the law to sanction human rights abusers and that they are individual sanctions that do not affect the society that they want to protect with precisely these sanctions. The United States has this law, which is called Magnitsky after a journalist who fought against the regime in Russia, Canada has it and Europe has finally approved it this month. And I believe that the Magnitsky law, although it does not break the rule of unanimity, does not involve corruption, but it will help us to respond from a foreign policy point of view, by introducing sanctions more quickly and also much clearer sanctions. We cannot be condemning certain regimes or certain leaders and then allow them to move their funds from bank to bank around the world or take a visa and catch a plane free, so it is important.

And could that apply to China? If we talk about human rights, in China we have always done business by holding our nose because there were many billions at stake.

The point is that international relations, those of the European Union as a global player, have and include the chapter on Human Rights. In relations we cannot break relations with the whole world because then we would also cease to be able to influence developments, openness and respect for basic rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of movement, it is not so simple. But in the face of flagrant violations of human rights and repression and trampling on citizens' rights, providing us with a law like the Magnitsky law, which is not called that, is the law that sanctions human rights, is important above all because it is going to allow us to act together with other countries. For example, the United States or Canada or other countries when sanctions of this type are established in order to coordinate and not allow places where these criminals can slip through our fingers. And also to act jointly to bring them to the International Criminal Court.