Calviño and Montero force the EU mission on funds to leave their cell phones outside to see them

The First Vice President of the Government,

and the Finance Minister,

, have forced the members of the European Parliament's Committee on Budgetary Control to enter meetings with them without their cell phones.

Calviño initiated this measure on Monday night and forced the president of the parliamentary mission,

and the rest of the delegation to leave their devices in boxes in an anteroom, according to the image obtained by this newspaper.

Calviño's team alleged security reasons and that it is the protocol that the vice president usually follows with her visits.

The Minister of Finance does not usually follow that practice of Calviño but she has applied it this Tuesday in her meeting with the MEPs this Tuesday at the Ministry of Finance.

Department sources confirm the measure and point out that Montero has limited himself to following the protocol established by the first vice president with the idea that it is common in this type of meeting.

Sources from the parliamentary mission are, however, astonished by such a security measure with them, although they have accepted it for the value they attribute to their work of evaluating whether the European Commission and the Government are complying with the regulation of European funds to the testimonies of Calviño and Montero.

The delegation includes MEPs from Germany, Italy and Portugal, as well as two MEPs from the PSOE (

l) and from Ciudadanos (

).

Also the MEP from the PP,

, from Vox,

, and from Izquierda Unida-Los Verdes,

.

In the past, Calviño has forced opposition figures such as the then leader of Ciudadanos,

, and the general secretary of the PP,

to enter to see her without mobile phones, claiming caution to avoid remote espionage or recordings.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs maintains that the meeting with the vice president was "cordial" and that in it conveyed "the full collaboration of the Government of Spain to facilitate the detail of the broad deployment of European Next Generation EU funds and the rigorous associated control system to it from the transparency that has governed the deployment of the Plan from the beginning".

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