VOX breaks regional deals with PP after row over unaccompanied minors

Spain’s far-right VOX party has broken off its coalition agreements with the centre-right Partido Popular (PP/EPP) in five regions, VOX leader Santiago Abascal said on Thursday, after the PP agreed to the government’s proposed measure to take in hundreds of unaccompanied minors, despite VOX previously saying it would not accept it.

Euractiv’s partner EFE reported that the political “divorce” affects five regions where both parties govern together but, in principle, not the city councils where PP and VOX also have government pacts.

“Nobody has voted for VOX, and I dare say the PP to allow an invasion of illegal migrants”, Abascal said in a speech at his party’s headquarters on Thursday evening.

In a brief statement to the media, Abascal said that as of Thursday, all government agreements with the PP in these regions had been “broken”.

“It is impossible to make a pact with those who do not want it,” said Abascal, adding that regional VOX ministers will now “go into opposition.”

However, according to PP sources, the governability and stability of the affected regions are guaranteed for the time being. From now on, one possible scenario is the calling of early elections.

VOX had previously held twelve regional ministries in the five regional governments governed by the PP. VOX and the PP governed alongside each other in Castilla y León, Aragón, Comunidad Valenciana, Extremadura and Murcia.

At an extraordinary meeting of the heads of government of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities on Wednesday, it was agreed that except for Catalonia, 347 migrant minors from the Canary Islands and the Spanish autonomous city of Ceuta would be taken in voluntarily under guardianship.

The coalition government between the PSOE and the progressive platform Sumar recently presented a plan for the reception of migrant minors based on ‘solidarity’ between the different Spanish regions and with a ‘humanitarian’ objective, although it is not yet mandatory.

The government aims to alleviate the enormous migratory pressure suffered by the Canary Islands, in particular, due to the massive arrival during the summer months of precarious boats from various countries off the coast of West Africa, one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world.

However, according to the Canary Islands authorities, the reception of the 347 minors will only be a temporary solution, as around 3,000 should be relocated to other Spanish regions to alleviate the huge migratory burden. The government claims that the only way to find a permanent solution to the forced reception of migrants is to reform the current law on foreigners.

PP spokesman Borja Sémper rejected VOX’s position on Thursday morning, accusing the far-right party of “looking for excuses” to “break” the bilateral agreements that have been in force since the local and regional elections on 28 May.

The PP’s support for the measure promoted by the government is “an exercise in solidarity with the Canary Islands, which is also Spain”, Semper said in an interview broadcast on Thursday by the public broadcaster Radio Nacional de España (RNE).

Despite the initial good tone of the regional cooperation between the PP and VOX, the far-right party has gradually distanced itself from the more moderate and centrist line of the PP and adopted a more ‘hawkish’ stance.

Evidence of its shift towards the more ‘pure’ far right is its recent departure from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group—considered more ‘moderate’—to join the hardline Patriots for Europe group, led by Hungary’s Eurosceptic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Spanish Minister for Integration, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, on Thursday, accused the two right-wing parties of being in a “race for lack of solidarity” and called on them to stop “instrumentalising” migrants.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)

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