Rajoy to keep Congress waiting on bailout debate

Keeping faith in his personal policy of being conspicuous by his absence, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will not appear in Congress to explain the bailout for the country’s banks until after a European Union summit at the end of June, as the ruling Popular Party continued to present the rescue package as its own success and cast blame on the previous Socialist administration for failing to deal with the problems in the sector, official sources said Monday.

Rajoy has an absolute majority in Congress and left Saturday’s announcement of the 100-billion-euro loan from the European Union to his economy minister, Luis de Guindos. Parliament is normally in recess in July.

The secretary general of the PP, María Dolores Cospedal, said the “achievement” of the loan was the result of the government’s “ambitious reform agenda” and having regained “the confidence” of the markets and European leaders that had been lost by the Socialists, whom she accused of failing to carry out even “one of the things that should have been done some time ago.”