The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, received yesterday in Madrid his counterpart from Andorra, Maria Ubach, with whom he discussed the negotiations of the Association Agreement with the EU and reached an agreement to promote a cross-border cooperation strategy.
“Productive meeting in Madrid with my Andorran counterpart, Maria Ubach, to review our bilateral relations. We have also addressed the EU-Andorra association agreement and the Ibero-American Summits,” was the terse message disseminated by Albares, on his official Twitter account, regarding the meeting.
As reported by the Andorran Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the two ministers addressed different aspects of bilateral relations and congratulated each other on the celebration, in 2023, of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries through the Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation of 1993.
Spain is Andorra’s main trading partner. In addition, of the 79,000 citizens residing in the Principality, 27,000 are Spanish. The Principality is also home to 3,000 cross-border workers. José Manuel Albares and Maria Ubach stressed the importance of cross-border cooperation and agreed to promote a strategy to foster cross-border links between the two countries.
Spain currently maintains border cooperation strategies with Portugal, agreed at the end of 2020 during the XXXI Spanish-Portuguese Summit in Guarda and developed with the very recent creation of the Spain-Portugal Cross-Border Cooperation Network (REDCOT, agreed in November 2022 during the XXXIII Summit in Viana do Castelo), and with France, outlined in March 2021 during the XXVI Spanish-Galician Summit in Montauban and developed in the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation signed last January during the XXVII Barcelona Summit, which includes, among other proposals, the development of mechanisms and objectives for cross-border cooperation and the creation of a Border Cooperation Committee of a consultative nature.
Albares and Ubach also reviewed the state of negotiations of the Association Agreement with the EU. In this regard, the Andorran minister conveyed to her counterpart the importance of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU, which will take place during the second half of 2023 and in the course of which the negotiations are expected to be concluded. In addition, both ministers agreed that the Association Agreement is “a key instrument” for the economic and social growth of both Andorra and the surrounding territories, taking into account the role played by the Principality in the economic development of the Pyrenees.
Andorra and the EU have been negotiating, since 2015, the signing of a new Association Agreement that would allow the Principality to access the European Economic Area (EEA), the framework that brings together all EU member states and three of the four European Free Trade Association states (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and guarantees an internal market regulated by the same basic rules. The EU’s negotiations with Andorra are linked to those with two other small territorial states, Monaco and San Marino.
In October 2021, Albares assured in Madrid, during the previous official of Maria Ubach, that the negotiations for the Association Agreement between the Principality and the EU will be “a priority” of the Spanish Presidency. For her part, the Andorran minister thanked the “continued support of Spain” in these negotiations, “a long and complex process” that constitutes a “priority for Andorra” because it “will allow it to participate in the EU’s internal market”. Likewise, in July 2022, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, reiterated -during a meeting at La Moncloa Palace with the head of the Government of Andorra, Xavier Espot– Spain’s support to the Principality so that the negotiations of the Association Agreement with the EU “can soon be successfully concluded”.
