Presidency in minor key

Now at midterm, the Spanish presidency is steering a course of low-key discretion through international waters – after a series of let-downs. Zapatero’s government tried to get Obama to come to the EU-US Summit this May, but Obama won’t be putting in an appearance, though more for domestic reasons than to snub the EU. Nor did EU chief diplomat Catherine Ashton attend the summit with Morocco in early March to throw her weight behind one of the Spanish president’s major undertakings. Now it looks as though the only important event left on the president’s international itinerary is the Latin American summit in June, aside from a toned-down Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) summit, whose outcome is iffy anyway in view of the permanent gridlock in the Middle East conflict.

The Spanish presidency got cast as a guinea pig in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty reforms and the appointment of institutional heads Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton, who are now staking their claim to top billing in Europe. And yet that looked like a good opportunity for Zapatero to make a quantum leap forwards on his ever-hesitant international agenda. But the acute economic crisis in Spain does not put the country in pole position for preaching to Europe. Its high unemployment rate and the fact that, statistically speaking, Spain is the only country in the eurozone still mired in recession are not the ideal calling cards to hand round to its European partners. Times being what they are, and amid so much "competition", Europe needs leadership, and Zapatero has instead opted for discretion and domestic priorities.

Spain has been relegated to the back of the class in this crisis-ridden Europe, where, when it comes time to pay the piper, solidarity does not seem a matter of course, as evidenced by all the internecine strife over the Greek bailout. And that in spite of the Spanish government’s repeated insistence that the country’s situation bears no resemblance to the Greek predicament. In his own interest, Zapatero is now the very man to take the helm and steer Europe towards a consensus to come to the aid of nations in distress. Sergio Cebrián