{"id":525259,"date":"2025-10-24T17:37:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T17:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/525259\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T17:37:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T17:37:19","slug":"catalan-basque-and-galician-get-a-boost-as-merz-and-sanchez-team-up-in-brussels-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/525259\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalan, Basque and Galician get a boost as Merz and S\u00e1nchez team up in Brussels \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Making Catalan an official EU language is one of the key promises S\u00e1nchez gave to nationalist leader Carles Puigdemont, whose party, Junts, and their seven seats in the Spanish parliament hold the key to S\u00e1nchez\u2019s mandate stability, as he needs their votes to reach a majority. Germany was the largest country <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/eu-resist-spain-catalan-official-language-seperatist-basque-galician-budget\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">to oppose<\/a> the move when EU countries voted on it in May.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the latest example of cooperation after a September meeting in Madrid between Merz and S\u00e1nchez, who represent Europe\u2019s two biggest political families \u2014 the Conservatives and the Social Democrats. At that rare German-Spanish lovefest, they vowed to work closely together at the EU level to deliver on their promises, helping each other strengthen their grip on power in Berlin and Madrid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGermany and Spain will continue to strengthen their ties and commit to more Europe,\u201d S\u00e1nchez said back then. \u201cThat message of unity is the most powerful one we can convey to our fellow citizens right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, Merz argued that, since the European Socialists in Brussels are led by a Spaniard (Iratxe Garc\u00eda), and the European center-right by a German (Manfred Weber), both leaders \u201cagreed to talk to each other and try to overcome the differences so that the two groups can then truly work together effectively in the European Parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the weeks that ensued, practical examples this freshly forged alliance are coming to the fore and having a real impact at the European level. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The announcement on linguistic recognition comes just two weeks after S\u00e1nchez <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/newsletter\/brussels-playbook\/vdls-no-confidence-showdown\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">intervened with the Socialists group in the European Parliament<\/a> to force them to rubber-stamp a controversial simplification package, slashing green reporting rules for businesses, put forward by the center-right European People\u2019s Party \u2014 Merz\u2019s party.<\/p>\n<p>The proposal, known in Brussels as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/parliament-stalls-eus-first-effort-to-simplify-rules-for-business\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Omnibus 1<\/a>, is\u00a0a brainchild of Merz and was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/friedrich-merz-vows-stick-in-the-wheels-of-brussels-machine-overregulation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">at the center of his campaign<\/a> for the chancellery in the spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Making Catalan an official EU language is one of the key promises S\u00e1nchez gave to nationalist leader Carles&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[143380,2000,299,1945,1824,30995,14921,5111,5338,48,104,6647],"class_list":{"0":"post-525259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-carles-puigdemont","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-friedrich-merz","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-manfred-weber","14":"tag-omnibus","15":"tag-parliament","16":"tag-pedro-sanchez","17":"tag-rights","18":"tag-spain","19":"tag-stability"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115430362032227741","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}