“The candidacy of Valls to the Mayor of Barcelona represents the spirit of the Treaty of Maastricht when it creates European citizenship”
Teresa Freixes
Teresa Freixes, professor of Constitutional Law at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and full academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), believes that the candidacy of former French prime minister Manuel Valls to the Mayor of Barcelona is a boost to the pro-European postulates, in that it realizes the possibility that any citizen of the European Union can’t only exercise their labour rights in any State of the Union, but can naturally develop the responsibilities of an elected official.
“One thing that has to be taken into account and that neither the French nor the Spanish press shows is the European value of Valls’ candidacy, says the academician. That is the spirit of the Treaty of Maastricht when it creates European citizenship and, between the rights of citizenship, this of being elector and eligible in municipal elections and to the European Parliament. This is in the dream of Jean Monnet of Altiero Spinelli and of all those who have contributed to ‘making Europe’. 
European has to be a united Europe. And for that, the existence of European politicians in the Member States, the transnational candidacies (which don’t arrive for the next European elections but for the following ones) and the joint work between the citizens of the different States it has to become a common currency in the coming years”.
Founder and president of the Civic Concordia platform, for Freixes the presence of Valls in a campaign for the Mayor of a large European city with which he maintains links after leading the Executive of another State is the best example to reinforce a European Union that periodically is immersed in an identity crisis. “We have to assert Europe, that Europe that is going through difficult days, with populisms and rising nationalisms, we have to make the European spirit also up and Valls gives us a great example of what is possible.”
