The presentation of the candidacy of the current Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, for the general direction of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) announces a probable diplomatic collision with the Italian Government, which has already formally protested to the Cypriot presidency of the EU, before Sánchez’s official announcement.
The Italian Government already expressed its discomfort weeks ago regarding Sánchez’s plans through a letter sent by the Italian Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, to his Cypriot counterpart, Maria Panayiotu. In it, he accused Spain of wanting to establish a “food hegemony,” according to the newspaper La Razón.
From Rome, it is assured that both governments committed to supporting the Italian candidacy, that of the current deputy director of the organization, Maurizio Martina, since Spain maintains its intention to support the renewal of Álvaro de Lario as president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
The president of the Spanish Government took advantage of his presence yesterday at the FAO headquarters in Rome to announce his Government’s intention to present Luis Planas’s candidacy to lead the FAO.
On the website of the Presidency of the Government, there is no reference to the announcement of Planas’s candidacy. But there is a long piece of information about Sánchez’s speech at the event ‘Food Security and Nutrition Under Pressure: Consequences of the Conflict in the Middle East.’
In that speech, he denounces “the use of hunger as a weapon to destabilize and subjugate and the consequences of the impact of wars on global food systems” and points out that the head of the Spanish Government “has held a meeting with the heads of the three United Nations agencies responsible for global food issues —FAO, IFAD, and WFP—”, to whom he conveyed that Spain’s commitment to these organizations “remains unbreakable.”
