Arias Cañete's reserved weekend with four Government ministe

Miguel Arias Cañete has been, for several weeks, the favorite to become the PP candidate for the European elections. It even seemed that Rajoy and Cospedal would announce his name this Monday. Aware of these rumors, the Minister of the Environment met, in a reserved manner, with other members of the Government in La Rioja. As El Confidencial Digital has learned , Cañete brought together up to four ministers from Rajoy's Government, who met in Haro. In addition to the head of the Environment, José Manuel García-Margallo, Jorge Fernández Díaz, Ana Pastor, and José Manuel Soria attended the Riojan town . The five arrived on Friday at the hotel they had previously booked. Afterwards, they moved to the nearby municipality of Casalarreina to have dinner at a well-known restaurant, and then returned to rest in Haro . On Saturday they visited some wineries in the municipality, and were greeted by some local residents who recognized them during the subsequent meal. The meeting of the five ministers did not go unnoticed in the Basque PP Congress . Some party leaders were aware of that meeting reserved for the same Saturday. Mariano Rajoy , who on Sunday did not want to comment on the matter, seemed “aware” of what had happened not many kilometers away .



One of the favorite places in Cañete Miguel Arias Cañete “hides his cards” when he is asked whether or not he will be a PP candidate for the European elections. However, for the sources consulted by ECD, the weekend meeting with four colleagues from Phone Number List the Government " seemed like a farewell, even more so if you take into account the place where they were ." And, according to people close to the Minister of the Environment, Rioja Alta, and more specifically the municipality of Haro, “ is one of the favorite corners of Arias Cañete .” In this Rioja municipality, for example, last year the minister met representatives of the EU Agriculture Commissioner to analyze with them the conditions of the CAP reform: “He has always liked this place to hold important meetings, as it could have been that of the weekend.” Silence of Rajoy and Cospedal Although many assumed that Mariano Rajoy would announce this Monday, at the meeting of the national executive of the PP, the name of Arias Cañete as the party's candidate for the European elections, the president has remained silent. Popular leaders assure that the head of the Executive " will wait for the meeting of the Electoral Committee ", as it is a "more appropriate forum" to announce the head of the list to the Strasbourg Parliament. In the press conference after the executive meeting, María Dolores de Cospedal has avoided answering whether Cañete will be the party's candidate for the European elections.







The general secretary of the PP has announced that the electoral campaign is “practically closed”, and that “all the Government ministers” will participate in it.The Transparency Law, which the Government promoted when the 'Bárcenas case' broke out, has remained on 'stand by' after the final approval of the text last November. The reason is that many administrations would fail to comply with the rule today if it were already applied. For this reason, the Executive has given autonomies and city councils until October to update their records. The response of the administrations has put the Executive on notice: many of them did not have the economic data (balance sheets, year-ends, etc.) that must be entered into the future Transparency Portal. Given this lack of documentation, it has been decided not to apply the law yet. The sources consulted by this newspaper, who shaped the text and participated in the parliamentary process, explain that “this risk was already taken into account.” For this reason, a closed period - the so-called 'vacatio legis' - was not set for the application of the new norm . Thus, the Government estimates that, “around next October” the law will come into force and all administrations will have the obligation to present and publish all the information required by the text.