Juanma Moreno visits Brussels as part of his plan to raise Andalucía's international profile

The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, is starting a two-day visit to Brussels today, Monday, and will attend a meeting of the European Committee of the Regions, of which he is vice-president, for the first time in person.

This is his fourth official visit to Brussels since he became the president of the Junta, but the first during this second term in office, in which he governs with an absolute majority.

Moreno has been keen to project Andalucía internationally since he first became president of the region, but the pandemic reduced the opportunities to do so and now his team is keen to make up for lost time.

The initial plan was for him only to visit the Committee of the Regions, a body that deals with 70% of EU laws, but this has now been extended and a meeting was scheduled with the commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fishing, Virginijus Sinkevicius, to whom he intended to make the Andalusian government’s opposition to new regulations regarding trawling very clear. That meeting had to be postponed as Sinkevicius underwent surgery on Sunday, and Moreno will now meet his chief of staff, Simonas Satunas, instead.

Other meetings have been scheduled with Olgierd Geblewitz, president of the European Partido Popular at the Committee of the Regions, Vasco Ilidio Alves Cordeiro, who currently holds the presidency of the Committee, and the mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Traskowski, among others.

Moreno will also attend an event called Discover the Flavour of Andalucía, which has been organised by Extenda and on Tuesday he will participate in a ceremony to commemorate the Spanish Día de la Hispanidad and the 500th anniversary of Juan Sebastián Elcano’s first circumnavigation of the globe.

The meeting with the Committee of the Regions is due to take place on Tuesday afternoon.