The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers submitted on Tuesday to the Spanish Parliament the Agreement between Spain and Colombia for the reciprocal promotion and protection of investments (APPRI) and its Interpretative Declaration, and at the same time authorized the manifestation of Spain’s consent to be bound by said Agreement.
With this new Agreement, according to the Government, “Spain and Colombia intend to achieve for their investments a reciprocal and effective protection that guarantees the legitimate right of the parties to achieve legitimate objectives of public interest”. Likewise, in the area of dispute resolution, both countries have included an Interpretative Declaration that guarantees more impartial, independent, consistent, predictable and transparent arbitration procedures. “The modernization of the APPRI text will allow the investment commitments governing bilateral relations with Colombia to be aligned with the EU’s investment protection policy,” the Executive added.
The Agreement was signed in Bogota on March 31, 2005. Due to the interest of both parties in modernizing it, the European Commission authorized Spain, in December 2017, to enter into formal negotiations with Colombia for its modification in order to align its content with the most recent developments in international law and with the EU’s investment protection policy. Having obtained authorization from the European Commission, Spain and Colombia began negotiations for the modernization of the APPRI text in 2018. In August 2019, the two delegations reached a textual agreement and the European Commission authorized its signature on September 26, 2019.
However, in October 2019, the Colombian delegation communicated to the Spanish delegation the Opinion issued by the Colombian Constitutional Court on international agreements requesting that the interpretative margin of the binding provisions of this type of agreement be reduced. Therefore, the two delegations negotiated an Interpretative Declaration specifying some of the elements contained in the text of the APPRI. On February 12, the European Commission informed Spain of its agreement with the text reached.
Finally, the APPRI was signed in Madrid last September 16, after authorization by the Council of Ministers on June 15, 2021, by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of Colombia, Iván Duque, coinciding with the official visit to Spain of the South American leader. The agreement, according to Sánchez, will make possible the existence of a “more balanced, transparent, impartial and effective bilateral framework in Spanish-Colombian trade relations”. For her part, the Colombian Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, Ximena Lombana, declared at the same time in Madrid that the APPRI “will make it possible to generate greater confidence and provide more security for mutual investments”.
