Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, and her Algerian counterpart, Sabri Boukadoum, announced yesterday that the eighth bilateral High Level Meeting (RAN) will be held in the second half of this year on Spanish territory.
“Algeria is a strategic, economic and political partner” and a country with which Spain maintains “an intense political dialogue despite the pandemic and an effective and close cooperation in the management of migratory flows, the fight against terrorism and energy cooperation”, said Gonzalez Laya during the joint press conference at the ministerial headquarters of the Palacio de Viana in Madrid.
“We are willing to deepen and diversify relations” and, therefore, “we have decided to work as of today for the next High Level Meeting, which will take place in Spain in the second half of the year and for which we have not yet set a date”, she continued. In the meantime, “we have decided to start mapping the key interests of the Algerian economy in which we can promote a greater presence and greater Spanish investment”, added González Laya after his bilateral meeting with Boukadoum.
Boukadoum’s agenda in Madrid went well beyond what is usual for a foreign minister, as he was received by King Philip VI, by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez (who emphasized during the meeting that Spain aspires to become a reference trade partner for Algeria, and not only in the energy sector), and by the Vice President for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera. González Laya herself was also received by the Algerian president, Abdelmejid Tebboune, during his official visit to Algeria in early March 2020, as was the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, in August 2020.
For his part, Sabri Boukadoum declared that Algeria “maintains a strategic relationship with Spain” and assured that the two governments have “the intention to organize at the end of the year the High Level Meeting in Spain”. Pedro Sanchez assured last October, during his official visit to Algeria, that the two governments had the “mutual desire” to hold in 2021, “when the pandemic is over, a High Level Meeting which, on this occasion, it would be up to Spain to host”. The trip of the President of the Government to Algeria had initially been planned for April 2020 with the intention, precisely, of preparing the High Level Bilateral Meeting for the second half of the same year, but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented it. The last RAN was held in 2018 in Algeria.
On the other hand, Arancha Gonzalez Laya and Sabri Boukadoum addressed during their meeting yesterday the migration issue, an issue on which, according to the minister, “cooperation with Algeria is full”. “We fight together against irregular migration, to dismantle human trafficking networks and to prevent criminal networks that profit from the misfortunes of others”, she explained. Likewise, the two countries “work together to open regular migration channels to Spain and work together in the countries of origin, such as those of the Sahel, to improve the situation and socio-economic conditions and stability with the aim of avoiding the increase in the flow of irregular migration to our country through Algeria”, she added.
In this regard, the Algerian minister assured that Algeria, which “is not a country of origin and faces more migratory pressure than most of the countries on the northern shores of the Mediterranean”, has never “failed to fulfill its commitments to Spain in this matter, despite the health context”. He also reported that the two ministers had discussed during their meeting the creation of “better conditions to facilitate the human flow of students, academics and businessmen between the two countries” as an alternative to irregular migration.
During the meeting, according to Gonzalez Laya, the two ministers did not address the controversy generated by Algeria’s intention to extend its territorial waters to the coasts of the Spanish island of Cabrera, in the framework of the creation of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). “I can speak on behalf of the Algerian minister to say that we maintain the traditional position of Spain and Algeria that there is no room for unilateralism in the delimitation of maritime spaces,” the minister assured. “When the time comes, we will approach it in a dialogued and negotiated manner”, she concluded. “Our positions are so close that the minister can speak on my behalf”, the head of Algerian diplomacy specified.
