The trust of Catalan society with respect to European institutions is not at its best. The economic crisis of 2008 and the management carried out curbed the European enthusiasm of the countries of Southern Europe. In the following long decade, the position of the EU before the pro-independence process draws a bump in the Catalan polls in 2017 that recovers slowly. This is the background scenario faced by the Minister of Foreign Action, Victòria Alsina, to define European policy and for this reason she has today asked the EU to “correct its positions and see the Catalan voice in Europe as a response to the consolidation of the European project”.
The councilor has thus defended a “critical Europeanism” framed her claim in three fundamental questions that have been put on the table in recent months. On the one hand, the repeated request that the principle of subsidiarity be applied in the management of the Next Generation funds and, therefore, that the Government participate. Likewise, she has lamented that within the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe (Cofoe) launched by the EU as a participatory process for citizens to define the lines of action, the official status of the Catalan language has not been accepted. And, likewise, the request to allow a territory that exercises self-determination to remain a member of the EU has been denied.
These issues, as Alsina has pointed out, connect with the fundamental principles of Europe and liberal democracies, which is why he understands that the great opportunity offered by the EU itself to strengthen its future may “remain at risk”. Alsina has closed the conference “What does Catalonia think of Europe?” that through the analysis of the data worked by the Diplocat, the Center d’Estudis d’Opinió and the Institut Internacional Català per la Pau have offered this portrait of “moderate enthusiasm” in the surveys regarding the European institutions. Trust, for example, in the European Parliament is 5.01 in Catalonia (on a scale of 1 to 10), in the rest of the autonomies it reaches 5.51 and in the EU it is 5.94.
The councilor has emphasized the need for the management of the Next Generation funds to be carried out from the territories, from the regional or intermediate governments that have both the skills and the people trained to be able to carry out this management. It is important, he pointed out, not to fall into “self-complacency” with how the EU is working and, therefore, for Europe to take advantage of the two major projects it has launched, both the funds and the lines that define this participatory Conference, where no has allowed the main Catalan demands to reach the plenary.
In this analysis of the citizens’ perception of Europe, Jordi Muñoz, director of the CEO, pointed out that the citizens who currently show more confidence in the European institutions are located in ideological fringes far from the left and from independence.
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