Salvador Illa travels for the fourth time to Brussels and will meet with Costa and Ribera

BarcelonaSalvador Illa returns to Brussels. He maintains a busy international agenda and this week will be the fourth time that, as president of the Generalitat, he travels to the Belgian capital. The two most prominent meetings expected to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday will be with the President of the European Council, António Costa, and the Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Clean, Fair and Competitive Transition, Teresa Ribera, according to sources from the Catalan executive.

The president of the Generalitat also plans to speak at the plenary session of the Committee of the Regions, an advisory body that represents the regional and municipal administrations of the EU. Other leaders will participate, including the President of the European Council and the Commissioner for Cohesion, Raffaele Fitto. In addition, Illa will meet with the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Housing.

Shortly after taking office, the PSC leader chose to visit the Belgian capital, where he met with the President of the European Parliament, the conservative Roberta Metsola, and participated in a plenary session of the Committee of the Regions. He traveled accompanied by the Minister for the European Union and Foreign Action, Jaume Duch, who was the spokesperson for the same European parliamentary chamber.

Later, three months later, Illa returned to travel to the Belgian capital to meet – as this time – with the main socialist leaders of the community institutions, Costa and Ribera. Then, as now, for the Government one of the main issues on the debate table at the European institutions was the official status of Catalan in the European Union. The initiative, however, remains stalled and has not yet obtained the approval of the twenty-seven member states of the European bloc.

The third time the president of the Generalitat traveled to Brussels, he met with former president Carles Puigdemont at the headquarters of the Delegation of Catalonia to the European Union. This time, although the return of the Junts leader is expected soon, government sources indicate that no meeting is planned between the PSC leader and the Junts leader.