Challenging the Spanish Prime Minister on his record on the economy, migration and foreign policy, Left MEPs called on Pedro Sánchez to tackle the root causes of the recent rise of the far-right in this morning’s European Parliament debate in Strasbourg.

“The breeding ground for far-right movements is that governments no longer fulfil their obligations to working people. Cuts and regressive labour reforms have allowed the far-right to take advantage of despair and they have used this to spread their ideas of false enemies and false solutions,” Paloma López MEP (Izquierda Unida, Spain) said.

“Neoliberal policies pushed from Brussels have undermined the welfare state and the mismanagement of the crisis has increased inequality. Your policies have served the privileged, caused a lot of social pain, and resulted in a legitimacy crisis,” she said, calling for “real commitments, rather than good intentions” at the European level on labour policy, foreign affairs, and gender equality.

“Your government began by welcoming the Aquarius rescue boat, six months later it ended up blocking the Open Arms boat in Barcelona, much to the delight of fascists like Salvini,” MEP Miguel Urbán (Podemos, Spain) told Sanchez.

Urbán highlighted repeated broken progressive promises from the Spanish government on workers’ rights, banking, and housing policy. “The question Mr. Sánchez is whether you will continue to be complicit in neoliberalism. To stop the reactionary wave that is spreading in Europe, we need a 180-degree change away from policies of cuts at the service of the elites. It is urgent to turn Europe around and we are running out of time!”