The European Socialist Party began its congress this Friday in Berlin, highlighting Portugal and Spain as “models of strength” within this political family and warning of the strengthening of the far right in Italy and in other countries of the community bloc.
“Pedro [Sánchez] and Antonio [Costa]: they are doing well,” said Achim Poch, General Secretary of the Party of European Socialists (PES), in the opening message of the congress, which took place in the German capital under the slogan “With courage. Through Europe”.
The Portuguese Prime Minister and the head of the Spanish government will speak at the party meeting on Saturday.
The advance of the radical right should be a “call for warning” to all European liberal democracies and to which European socialists and social democrats “must respond with force”, continued Achim Poch.
The first plenary session, to be held this Friday, will focus on the election of the new formation chairman, former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, a reference figure of Swedish Social Democracy, who will succeed Bulgarian Sergei Stanischev in the leadership of the PSE. since 2011.
The two days of the meeting and several sessions will address today’s key multilateral challenges, from the war in Ukraine to climate change, from responding to the energy crisis to fighting inflation.
Lofven represents one of the great families of European social democracy, the formation that dominated Swedish political life for decades.
However, the opening of the PSE congress marked a bitter moment for the party, when the new governing coalition was announced this Friday in Stockholm, led by the conservative Ulf Kristensson, which will be supported by the Swedish Democrats (SD), a formation of extreme -Turn right.
Saturday’s session will also include former Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, along with Sánchez and Costa, whose party received the most votes in last September’s elections with 30% of the votes cast, despite the fact that the coalition they led was overtaken by the right block. .
Also attending the meeting in Berlin are Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, among other European leaders.
The European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, the Vice-President of the European Parliament, Katarina Barley, and the Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, will also be in attendance.
The war in Ukraine will be the dominant theme of the congress, with Scholz referring to the situation through an earlier statement on Thursday and warning of what he called a “crusade against the West” being conducted by the Russian president. Vladimir Putin against all “liberal democracies” on a global scale.
The presence of Finland’s Sanna Marin and Sweden’s Magdalena Andersson at the meeting marks the change of course of the two Scandinavian countries after the conflict in Ukraine, in which Helsinki and Stockholm gave up their traditional military neutrality and applied for NATO membership.
In the margins of the congress, Sánchez and Costa Scholz will meet to discuss, among other things, issues related to the “energy supply” in the EU.
Source: DN
