07.07.2014 - 07:23
Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) will decide today whether Ramon Tremosa will leave the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and join another group in the European Parliament or if he will stay and share the group with Ciutadans and UPyD. The organizational secretary of the party said last week that sharing the space with the two unionist and populist parties would be very difficult: “To stay, many things have to happen, because getting along is very complicated, it will be very hard for us.” But the conversations with liberal leaders to help them understand that there is a “contradiction” between their positions in favor of the right to decide and that of the new Spanish MEPs does not seem to have been successful.
To start with, the group leadership has left pending Ramon Tremosa’s membership in the EU Parliament’s Economics Committee. It’s a way of applying pressure since if CDC decides to leave ALDE, Tremosa will not have a place on the committee in which he has worked very actively these last five years.
Within CDC, there are leaders that believe that after so many years as a part of the liberal family, the arrival of two pro-unionist Spanish parties cannot cause them to leave. In addition, they highly value the easy access the party has to governments and European prime ministers also tied to the liberal party. But, on the other hand, there are leaders who are calling for CDC to leave the group because they think it’s more important to be consistent with the right to decide and to make its commitment to the sovereignty process clear.
If CDC ends up leaving the parliamentary group in the end, it will try to stay within the European Liberal Party—which does not include UPyD or Ciutadans—as it joins the Greens-EFA group together with ERC, ICV and the Scottish National Party, among others.
