Silence in Brussels over Pedro Sánchez's humiliating words to two European Commission vice-presidents
The European Commission is silent on the contempt shown publicly by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to two of its vice-presidents. Bringing up the subject during a regional elections rally in Castilla y León, the Prime Minister let out an expletive worthy of a tavern brawl when, referring to the trip of the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, and the mayor of Zaragoza, Jorge Azcón, he said: "A whole mayor of Madrid, with the mayors of the PP, to go to the European Commission building and not even the doorman opens for him, not even the doorman pays any attention to him". A member of his party, the PSOE, Daniel Biondi, went even further in his contempt, stating without blushing with shame that "not a single EU official greeted Almeida and the PP mayors in Brussels".
In the EU capital they are astonished at such brazenness. The Popular Party mayors, who had travelled to Brussels to protest to the European Commission about the distribution of European funds received by the Spanish government and distributed according to strictly partisan criteria, according to them, proposing the creation of control and transparency mechanisms for these funds, were received by the Vice-President of the Commission responsible for the Promotion of the European Way of Life and Migration, the Greek Margaritis Schinas, and the Vice-President of the Commission responsible for Demography, the Croatian Duvrovka Suica.
All Commission vice-presidents, including those Sánchez considers to be below the level of "gatekeepers", Suica and Schinas, have the same level of senior civil servant status as the Spanish Socialist Josep Borrell and the Dutch first vice-president Frans Timmermans. They do not have the same responsibility and the same power, but they have the same level of senior civil servants.
The Spanish Prime Minister's humiliating words towards the two Vice-Presidents personally are also humiliating towards the governments of their respective countries, Greece and Croatia, who proposed their names to President Ursula von der Leyen as members of the EU executive. It should be borne in mind that of the 27 EU member states, only eight hold the post of vice-president, the rest occupy positions in the lower-ranking college of commissioners.
The European Commission has not commented on the incident, but it would not be strange if when the Spanish government goes to Brussels to ask for aid to tackle emigration or request support to alleviate the negative effects of insufficient demographic growth and the drama of "empty Spain", it finds itself face to face with the "non-civil servants" and "less-than-civil servants" vice-presidents Margaritis Schinas and Duvrovca Suica, whom it will beg to listen to its ailments.