Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, said yesterday that economic diplomacy is one of the main axes of the recently approved Foreign Action Strategy 2021-2024 and announced, in this regard, her intention to make a tour of Japan, South Korea and China in the first quarter of this year, if the pandemic allows it, to support the internationalisation of Spanish companies in Asia.
The main objective of the Foreign Action Strategy – which was approved and sent to the Spanish Parliament by the Council of Ministers last Tuesday – is to take advantage of Spain’s “strengths” as a “global player, not just a regional or European one”, to promote “a globalisation that has Spanish hallmarks”, the minister declared during her participation in the NEF Online telematic meeting, organised yesterday by New Economy Forum.
Apart from this, she continued, “the External Action Strategy devotes a great deal of space to economic diplomacy” because “the connection with the global economy” is “one of the great vectors of growth and employment in Spain, and two thirds of European growth will come from trade and investment in the rest of the world”.
Specifically, the text of the Strategy establishes that ‘economic diplomacy, understood as the actions undertaken by States to favour their economic interests in the international sphere’, has become ‘one of the axes of Spain’s foreign action and of current diplomacy’, Therefore, “during the period 2021-2024, an Economic Diplomacy Action Plan will be developed, aligned with the Strategy for the Internationalisation of the Spanish Economy 2017-2027 and the corresponding biennial Action Plans (2021-2022 and successive) of the Secretary of State for Trade to promote internationalisation and improve the competitiveness of Spanish companies abroad”.
According to the minister, “the internationalisation of companies, not only large companies, but also small and medium-sized ones”, is going to be “one of the major objectives of foreign action over the next four years” and, for this reason, she announced, “when possible, in the first quarter of the year, I will travel to Asia, to Japan, South Korea and China”, to promote the image and presence of Spanish companies on that continent.
Another of the objectives of economic diplomacy is to promote international trade with rules that allow “the creation of conditions that guarantee fair play“, a challenge that the Spanish government will try to promote “both in international bodies, such as the WTO and the OECD, and in bilateral relations”, continued the minister, who said she was convinced that the EU’s “major trade agreements” with Mexico, Chile, Mercosur, New Zealand and Australia (some already signed and others yet to be concluded) “will open up new opportunities for Spanish companies”.
