NATO Summit: The Show Begins | Opinion
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I hope I’m not wrong, but the NATO summit that begins this Tuesday in Madrid will be an organizational success for Spain. From the Peace Conference of 91 to COP25, we have a long and effective experience in international meetings. Another thing is the content that comes out of the meeting. Here, what directly affects our country will be highlighted: expanding Atlantic coverage to Ceuta and Melilla or the challenges of the so-called southern flank. The dramatic events of the past few days at the fence deserve an investigation and a complete rethinking of border security.
Hopefully the summit will also serve to broaden the knowledge of Spanish society about security. The Government should explain why it is increasing Defense budgets, what threats lie in wait for us and how it intends to tackle them. It should be an occasion to recover foreign and defense policy as state policies, even though they have lately succumbed to lack of coordination and polarization. Given the banality of our public debate, however, I suspect that the focus will be on the parade of authorities or on aspects that defend partisan positions.
As soon as the echoes of the summit die down, Spain will throw itself -it has already begun to do so- into the next major international event: the rotating presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2023. Within the system of trios introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, it is up to Spain to coordinate with Belgium and Hungary, a country that represents one of the greatest challenges for the deepening of European integration.
The presidency offers the opportunity to further involve a somewhat apathetic citizenry in the face of European issues and to promote specific initiatives that respond to our vision of the common project. The most obvious case is that of strengthening relations between the EU and Latin America, which have been bogged down for years. There’s a haunting feeling that we’re losing to the region, a space with which we share history, values and interests; a space that is being occupied at a forced march by a China charged with pragmatism. Resuming a bilateral summit postponed for years will be one of the Spanish objectives.
However, if there are no surprises, the Spanish presidency will coincide with a pre-election environment, after the president has pointed out that there will be elections in December 2023. Sánchez and his team may want to take advantage of the occasion to take advantage of an international semester and also it may happen that internal political dynamics overshadow the European agenda; that it becomes a throwing weapon in a fight that is expected to be intense. For this reason, the elaboration of priorities and the definition of objectives for the European presidency now requires the search for political consensus, so that an opportunity to provide vision and gain visibility for Spain does not become a battlefield that annuls all efforts.
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