The future of the crucial relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom will, in part, by Spanish hands. Clara Martinez Alberola has been appointed as number two in the team of Michel Barnier, the negotiator in chief for the european negotiations of the Brexit and in charge of negotiating during this year the political agreement and commercial that will attempt to preserve as far as possible a seamless relationship between Brussels and London.
Martínez Alberola reaches the position key is only a few weeks after you have stopped another charge that is fundamental in the fabric of the community. The experienced officer, european (born in Valencia in 1963) served as head of cabinet of Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, until the 30th of November, when the new president, Ursula Von der Leyen, took the baton from luxembourg.
The unit, led by Barnier, and in which Martínez Alberola will play a key role you have as a goal the delicate mission of making a pact with London, which regulates the entire bilateral relationship, from the commercial aspects of the fisheries agreements, from financial services (and the continuity or not of the City of london as the main financial centre of the euro zone) to the management of the transmission of personal data between both sides of the English Channel.
Brussels is expected to close this agreement, probably the most ambitious negotiated never with a third country, in a period of at least 21 months (from April 2019 to December 2020), with the possibility of extending the bidding until the end of 2021 or even the end of 2022.
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Clara Martínez Alberola, a Spanish in the pure heart of the Brexit
But the successive tripping of the ratification of the Agreement of output in the british Parliament (whose final approval is expected this month) has consumed more than a third of the initial term provided. And, in addition, the british prime minister, Boris Johnson, who on Wednesday met in London with Von der Leyen, has ruled out requesting an extension of the transitional period, so that the negotiators only have less than 11 months to devise a general agreement that covers, at least, the subjects most essential.
“We need to be pragmatic and not to put all the things at the same time on the negotiation table”, has recommended this Wednesday, Andrej Plenkovic, Croatian prime minister and president every six months, of the EU from 1 of January, during a press conference in Zagreb. Plenkovic, whose presidency will foster the implementation of the Brexit the 31st of January, has recommended that the negotiation focuses on issues essential as the “trade or fishing.”
the presence of The Spanish in the heart of this negotiation can help avoid misunderstandings about Gibraltar, as occurred in 2018 in the final stretch of the agreements between Barnier and the team of the british prime minister Theresa May. The government of Pedro Sanchez threatened to veto the historic agreement by understanding that the team Barnier had not respected the red lines of Spain on the future of the Rock after the exit of the Uk from the EU.
The mishap was overcome with a declaration of the community institutions, which acknowledges that Spain will always have the last word concerning the application to Gibraltar of any future agreement signed by EU and Uk. This same month, the governments of Spain and the United Kingdom is scheduled to meet now to address a question that will need to move in parallel to the negotiation of the agreement post-Brexit.
on the part of Brussels, the negotiation of the agreement will depend on the Unit led by Barnier, which now incorporates Martinez Alberola. For the Spanish, the new leap in his career brings the category of deputy director general of the European Commission, the second step most important in the administrative hierarchy of the agency community. The officer is thus a single step of crowning his ascent after nearly 29 years of experience unbroken in the Commission.
a Degree in Law by the University of Valencia and a degree in european law by the prestigious College of Bruges, a genuine nursery of the dome community, Martinez Alberola joined the Commission in 1991. His administrative career he gave the first big break in 2005, when he joined as a consultant to the team of Jose Manuel Barroso, then president of the European Commission.
The successor of Barroso, Jean-Claude Juncker, the joined his team since he took possession of the office in 2014, as number two in the powerful head of cabinet Martin Selmayr. In February 2018, the Spanish happened to Selmayr and assumed the leadership of the cabinet of the president, a position in which he remained until the end of the mandate of Juncker.
in Addition to Spanish, his mother tongue, the former right hand of Juncker speaks English, French, Italian and some Portuguese. His ascendancy through the ranks of community has enabled him to follow closely recent crises as severe as the migration in 2015 or the start of Brexit in 2016.
Next to Juncker and Selmayr also dealt with the reverberations policies caused in Brussels by the political crisis in Catalonia from the start of the procés independentista in 2014. The Government of Mariano Rajoy, the awarded him a medal in 2016 with the grand cross of Isabel the Catholic, one of the greatest distinctions of the Spanish State.
