The People's Party and Vox are leading the offensive against Sánchez over the European Parliament blackout: "Climate fanaticism leads to darkness."

BrusselsThe European Parliament is used to it. Every time the PP and Vox smell blood and see the possibility of attacking Pedro Sánchez's government, they force a debate in the European Parliament to transfer the Spanish political battle to the European institutions. The power outage has not been an exception., although—for obvious reasons—they tried to prevent the discussion of the DANA. The farce that the rest of the European Union MEPs had to endure this Wednesday is almost the same as always; only the subject matter has changed. This time, instead of focusing on the amnesty law or the use of Catalan, the Spanish right and far right harshly attacked the use of renewable energy and blamed it for the supply interruption that hit the Iberian Peninsula last week.

However, the structure of the argument hasn't changed one bit. The first to pounce on Sánchez was the Popular Party's Dolors Montserrat. According to the PP MEP, the possibility of a blackout "was already written in stone" and the Moncloa (Ministry of Justice) "ignored" it. "It was negligence foretold," the Catalan leader asserted: "all of Europe knows" that it was the "incompetence" of the Spanish president, which "endangered the energy security of Spain, Portugal, and France, and also of the EU as a whole."

Montserrat also wanted to dedicate a few words to the former Minister of Ecological Transition and current Vice President of the European Commission, the socialist Teresa Ribera: "The mastermind of the disaster that almost sank Spain is no longer in Madrid. He's in Brussels." She then asserted that Sánchez and Ribera's "climate fanaticism" has led the State "into darkness" because "they rely everything on renewable energy" and are abandoning nuclear energy.

In the Socialist Party's turn to respond, MEP Nicolás González responded to Montserrat's assertion that not a single nuclear plant has been closed since Sánchez took office and has staunchly defended the work of the PSOE and Sumar government. In this regard, he championed the energy transition and the deployment of renewable energy. "They have created a false debate between renewables and nuclear energy," the Socialist MEP emphasized, predicting that "this type of opposition from the PP" will "never bring them to power."

In turn, Republican Diana Riba noted that today, "everyday life is electric" and that, therefore, a "more resilient and decentralized" grid is necessary. "Electricity companies must be predominantly public," she added. Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé has maintained the same line as Montserrat and has pointed to the imposition of renewable energy as the cause of the blackout: "It was cruel for progressives to see how only cash and diesel saved lives."

More interconnection

The European Commission has once again become a secondary character in the story. Energy Minister Dan Jørgensen simply urged Member States to increase energy interconnections between countries and reiterated that the EU will conduct an independent investigation into the events. He never questioned Sánchez's government or made any effort to extend the life of nuclear power plants. In fact, he refused to even get his foot in the door and went almost unnoticed, as if the European Commission's participation in these types of plenary sessions in the European Parliament were simply part of the stage set with which the People's Party (PP) intends to dress up its opposition to Sánchez.