Sánchez is increasing military spending and subsidies for fossil fuels, yet he is held up as a model for the left

For the left, Spain is always the model. The latest example concerns fuel prices, which are rising sharply due to the war in the Middle East. Leaders of the ‘Campo Largo’ coalition point to pump prices in Spain – 30–40 cents per litre lower – and criticise Giorgia Meloni for failing to cut excise duties, as Pedro Sánchez has done. Yet the progressive parties – from the PD to the M5S, including the AVS – all have in their manifestos the cutting of environmentally harmful subsidies (which include excise duty discounts) and the phasing out of fossil fuels. Meloni did exactly what was in the centre-left’s manifesto, bringing excise duties on diesel and petrol into line, as required by the EU. And this is precisely what the Sánchez government is failing to do.

Madrid, too, was supposed to have raised the excise duty on diesel, bringing it into line with that on petrol, but failed to do so. The government lacks the parliamentary support to approve a measure contained in the Plan de Recuperación (the Spanish NRRP). Consequently, last year the European Commission cut Spain’s fifth instalment by 1.1 billion for failing to comply with certain reforms, including that relating to excise duties. Brussels then released part of that amount with the sixth instalment, paid out at the start of July, whilst freezing 200 million due to the excise duty issue, and setting a new deadline of the end of August for Spain to meet its commitments. But the government has now given up on this, as it knows it does not have the votes to pass such an unpopular measure. Moreover, Sánchez has never passed a Budget Bill during this parliamentary term because he no longer has a parliamentary majority. In any case, he has managed, without going through Parliament, to increase military spending by 10 billion euros (one of the highest increases in NATO) and to ask Europe for the Safe mechanism and the activation of the safeguard clause for the increase in military spending. Even on defence, for the centre-left, which opposes rearmament, Sánchez remains the model. Come what may.