Santa Cruz Palace’s Façade, seat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The Diplomat offers you the complete text of the new regulations project
Luis Ayllón. Madrid
The Regulations for the Diplomatic Career, which date back to 1995, are about to disappear. After discussing it with the diplomats, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has finished the new text regulating the functioning of the Diplomatic Career in order to send it to the Council of State for its consultation.
The Diplomat has had access to the draft of these Regulations, which offers to its readers, and whose main novelty would be the system to appoint new ambassadors. Generally, it will take a twenty-year career to go in for a mission chief position, although it will still be possible for the Government to appoint any person considered to be appropriate for the position, diplomat or not.
It would be normal that, for those Embassies in the most important countries or international bodies for the Spanish foreign policy such as the United States, France, Germany, Morocco, the UN or the EU, for example, the Executive makes the decision without sticking to the new mechanism to propose ambassadors.
Embassies and permanent representations will be divided into three groups in descending order of importance
For the rest of the cases, this is, in short, the system that may be in force in Spain in the future:
-A mechanism is established to apply for ambassador vacant positions, which will be made public in an official announcement.
-The minister will make the official announcement every year, before 30 September, specifying the positions available. Those applicants meeting the conditions required for the position will have fifteen days from the day of the announcement to submit their applications.
-Embassies and permanent representations will be divided into three groups in descending order of importance. For Group I, it will be required to have the category of a plenipotentiary minister of third class and to have previously worked as a chief of mission. For Group II, the same category will be required, as well as having worked for at least three years as an executive in Public Administrations, in the EU or in an international body and having worked for at least another three years as a second chief of mission or consul general. For Group III, it will be necessary to have the professional category of Embassy’s adviser, to have held the positions mentioned in group II, but just for two years, and to have at least twenty years of experience in the Career. The two other groups do not ask for this requirement, because access to plenipotentiary minister usually comes after twenty years of career.
-A Work Team, chaired by the undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, will study the applications, will verify that the candidates meet the conditions and will value a series of criteria about their professional competences and their experience. After that, this group will give the minister a list of three candidates by order of preference to fill the positions.
