COMMUNICATION

The Director-General of External Action, Rosa Balas, has called for an ambitious budget for a strong Europe in Cuacos de Yuste on Friday.

This was pointed out during the annual meeting of the Spanish Federal Council of the European Movement ‘A New Dawn for Europe: a European conference on the future of Europe’, held on 6 and 7 March, at the Royal Monastery of Yuste.

During her speech, Balas recalled that this is a key moment, which will set Europe’s course in the coming years as is the negotiation of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), which will define an essential policy for the territories, such as the Cohesion Policy and the future of the CAP.

In this sense she pointed out that “from a profoundly European region, we defend that there can be no strong Europe, that citizens feel, without an ambitious budget”, while recalling the words of the President of the Regional Government of Extremadura, and head of the Spanish delegation to the Committee of the Regions, Guillermo Fernández Vara, when he said at the 138^th plenary session of the Committee of the Regions in Brussels in February that “it is impossible to send a message that we want more Europe with less budget”.

The Director-General also stressed that one of the main challenges facing Europe is to achieve a Common Migration Policy and that it is our responsibility “to improve our relationship with the rest of the world, and Europe is a mirror for many regions of the planet so, knowing the complexity of the current migration situation we are living, we have to achieve a common policy in this regard”.

She also pointed out other challenges facing Europe in improving the lives of its citizens, such as achieving a fair ecological transition, digitising the economy and society, and advancing the European pillar of social rights and Monetary Union.

YUSTE FOUNDATION AS A FORUM FOR REFLECTION

In the framework of this meeting, Rosa Balas explained that Extremadura had all the necessary aspects for the creation of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation more than twenty years ago.

The director pointed out that “although it is in the south of Europe, its purpose is solidarity, justice and equality among all peoples”. Extremadura, she said, “is a frontier land, which has its European identity and its Ibero-American vocation imprinted in its founding Statute”.

For all these reasons, Yuste Foundation is “an instrument and a meeting point” between Europe and Ibero-America, and has become a “forum for reflection and a bridge in the connection between both sides of the Atlantic”.

Finally, Balas recalled that Yuste is a “key” place in the memory of this continent, a space from which to reflect on the challenges that Europe must face and offer ideas to further deepen the European project.

In this respect, she called for the importance of peripheral areas in the construction of Europe, because, in her view, “Europe is not only a geographical demarcation, it is also a vital space, a way of defending values and rights that have built a fairer, more egalitarian, more united and freer society”.

The meeting was also attended by the Deputy Director-General for Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Secretariat of State for the European Union, José Luis Lozano; the President of the Spanish Federal Council of the European Movement and Professor of International Relations at the UCM, Francisco Aldecoa; the President of the Extremadura Council of the European Movement, Alejandro Cercas, the director of the European Commission’s Representation in Madrid, Francisco Fonseca, and MEP, Ignacio Sánchez Amor, among other authorities.