The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, distanced himself this Tuesday from the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and urged community partners to “defend” the international order based on rules, warning that “the opposite is disorder”.
In the appearance after the Council of Ministers, Albares stressed that the Government “identifies” with the position of the President of the European Council, António Costa, who had already marked differences with the head of the community Executive.
As he recalled, Costa has called for “guaranteeing that the world remains based on rules” and has opted for “multilateral solutions,” in contrast with the statements by Von der Leyen, who affirmed that “one can no longer trust” in the international system as “the only way” to safeguard one’s own interests in the face of threats, in reference to the attack by the United States and Israel against Iran.
Albares stressed that “Europe has to defend the international order because the alternative is disorder, not order, and there is no opposition between an old order and a new one that would replace it”, insisting that the current framework “establishes virtuous relations” between States.
Defense of multilateralism
The head of Spanish diplomacy stated that the dilemma today is between “law or force; peace and peaceful relations between States or the use of war as an instrument of foreign policy; progress or historical involution”.
Likewise, he/she/it remarked that the current international order is not only “a legal construct”, but the pillar of “multilateralism” with which contemporary “serious challenges” are faced, among which he/she/it cited climate change and migratory flows, and which makes possible “development and economic growth” and “free trade”.
To conclude, the head of Foreign Affairs recalled that the European Union “is a construction based on rights that protect all its members and on treaties” and that the “mission” of the European Commission is to act as a “guarantor” of the respect of both.