The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has chosen Arancha González Laya as Minister of Foreign Affairs, the EU and Cooperation, who until now has held the position of Executive Director of the International Trade Centre (ITC).
Born in 1969 in Tolosa (Guipúzcoa), a lawyer from the University of Navarre and with a postgraduate degree in European Law from the University Carlos III of Madrid, between 2002 and 2005 she held various positions in the European Commission, all of them related to international trade and foreign relations, and between 2005 and 2013 she was cabinet director of the then director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Pascal Lamy.
In August 2013, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon appointed her as Executive Director of ITC, a joint agency of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the promotion of international trade and business.
González’s appointment reveals Pedro Sánchez’s interest in strengthening the economic profile of his government, which will affect the composition of two ministries, that of Foreign Affairs, in which economic diplomacy will be a priority, and the recently created Ministry of Social Security, Inclusion and Migration. In any case, Arancha González did not appear in any of the pools, where names such as José Manuel Albares, Luis Planas, Irene Lozano and Cristina Gallach had circulated.
