Eduardo González
Once the parliamentary procedures have been completed, the new External Action Strategy 2021-24 has entered the final straight for its definitive approval, for which the Government is preparing an economic report and is compiling some of the suggestions from the parliamentary groups to be included in the text.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, presented the Strategy before the Congressional and Senate Foreign Affairs Committees on 18 and 25 February, respectively. Once this parliamentary phase has passed, and as established in the Law on State Foreign Service and Action, the text will pass through the Delegate Commission for Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Finance, the Foreign Policy Council – the collegiate body that supports and advises the President of the Government in this area, which must issue a report on the Strategy – and the General Commission of Secretaries and Under Secretaries of State – the Government body responsible for studying and preparing the matters that are submitted to the Council of Ministers. Finally, the External Action Strategy will be submitted to the Council of Ministers for final approval, which is expected to take place at the end of March, according to sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The text that is finally approved will not be exactly the same as the one presented to the two chambers, as it will include the various suggestions made by the parliamentary groups during the minister’s appearances before the two chambers, and it will also be accompanied by an economic report.
The absence of an economic report was expressly mentioned during the double parliamentary debate by the representatives of Ciudadanos, both by the MP Marta Martín Llaguno, who regretted that the document does not have “well calculated and well located” how its objectives are going to be financed, and by Senator Emilio Argüeso, who asked that the Strategy be accompanied by an economic report in which “the specific items are specified”. In their respective responses, González Laya assured that what was presented to the Parliament was only “a draft” and the definitive text “will be approved at a later date in the Council of Ministers and will be accompanied by an economic report”.
In this respect, the aforementioned Ministry sources have specified that what was presented to Parliament was only a “draft”, as established in the Law on Action and the State Foreign Service, and that the Executive is preparing a final version of the document that will include “the nuances and suggestions presented in Congress and the Senate” and will be accompanied by an economic report that is already being prepared jointly with the Ministry’s Economic Office, the Budgetary Office and the Ministry of Finance. This detail, according to the same sources, is a novelty, since the previous (and first) 2015 External Action Strategy was not accompanied by any economic report, beyond a reference to the Ministry’s budget for the 2014 financial year.
