<h5><strong>José Manuel Albares</strong></h5> <h5><strong>Minister of Foreign Affairs</strong></h5> <h4><em><strong>On 4 October, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress of Deputies, where he gave an extensive summary of the priorities, objectives and achievements of Spanish foreign policy in recent years. For this reason, the Elcano Royal Institute is making available to the public an article on the new Spanish foreign policy that includes the main points of this intervention.</strong></em></h4> <h4><em><strong>For those interested in reading the article in its entirety, they can do so through the <a href="https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/comentarios/una-politica-exterior-espanyola-con-identidad-propia/">Elcano Royal Institute</a> website.</strong></em></h4> Spain has just been elected a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council. This is a great recognition of our country's commitment to human rights and to the United Nations, but it is also the most recent achievement of the foreign policy with its own identity that is taking Spain to an unprecedented level of presence, voice and influence in the international arena. On October 4, I had the opportunity to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress of Deputies and present the main lines and the doctrinal and strategic orientation of this new foreign policy. This article contains the essence of that presentation. Spain is deploying a foreign policy with its own identity to face the challenges of the present and the future. A new foreign policy that is based on the defense of peace, democracy and human rights and that in the last three years has left concrete achievements of the highest order: the Summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in July 2022 in Madrid; the successful Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) in the second half of 2023, in which we achieved numerous advances in issues that had been stalled for years, such as the Migration and Asylum Pact, the opening of Ukraine's accession negotiations or the EU-CELAC Summit. We have achieved a historic Law of Cooperation, approved in February 2023 with great social and political consensus. We are leading the work for peace in the Middle East and for the two-state solution – with two meetings in the last four months held in Madrid attended by foreign ministers from European and Arab-Islamic countries – and we are key in supporting the sovereignty, territorial integrity and freedom of Ukraine. In addition, we have achieved the largest representation of Spaniards in European and international institutions in our history: the High Representative of the EU, the President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), the President of the European Banking Authority, the Personal Representative of the Secretary General of NATO for the Southern Neighbourhood, the High Representative of the Alliance of Civilisations. Also, in the last three years two Spaniards have led both the United Nations (UN) peace mission in Lebanon and the NATO advisory mission in Iraq and soon another Spaniard will become First Executive Vice-President of the new Commission, occupying the portfolio of Clean, Fair and Competitive Transition. They are all well-deserved appointments, which speak of the quality of our representatives but which are also the expression of the growing weight of Spain in recent years in the concert of nations, the greatest in our recent history. That has been my objective in the last three years and that is my future objective: to continue that path by increasing it even more. Starting this week, on the 8th and 9th, the United Nations International Conference on Victims of Terrorism was held in Vitoria. On October 28th we will celebrate the annual ministerial meeting of the Union for the Mediterranean, and Barcelona will become the capital of world diplomacy on that day. Next year, 2025, Seville will host the Conference on Financing for Development by decision of the United Nations, a sign of the UN's confidence in our foreign policy. In 2026, Spain will host the Ibero-American Summit by consensus of all Ibero-American countries, which demonstrates their support for Spain and our credibility in the Ibero-American Community. This new foreign policy is also based on a new doctrinal corpus. The new Spain-Africa Strategy is already ready for presentation and the next Foreign Action Strategy is moving forward, accompanied by a new design of our network abroad, which must accompany the new foreign policy that we are applying. We are also completing the digitalisation of our consular services; 15 consulates now have their Civil Registry digitised. In addition, the Council of Ministers has just approved the Royal Decree on the digitalisation of the Consular Registry, which will facilitate more efficient, closer and more agile consular service. We are also making progress in the reform of the cooperation system initiated with the new Law. Last July, both the new Master Plan 2024-2027 and the new Statute of the Cooperator were approved and we are working on the Statute of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the Royal Decree on Subsidies and that of the Spanish Fund for Sustainable Development (FEDES). Our Cooperation will continue to provide support to Ukraine and Palestine, and to work in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the Sahel. This is the reality of our foreign policy in a global context marked by multiple crises: the very serious and worrying escalation of violence in the Middle East, which has already spread to Lebanon, and the war in Ukraine. A context that has been, for some years now, even more complex and unstable, with an increase in polarization and a multiplicity of conflicts. In these moments of global instability and change, it is especially relevant to maintain that identity that defines our foreign policy: diplomacy for peace, for the defense of democracies and human rights. A foreign policy focused on maintaining the best relations with our neighbors, especially with those with whom we share a land border, such as France, a country with which we signed, in January 2023, the historic Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. With Portugal, with which we will continue to strengthen our already close ties at the next Spanish-Portuguese Summit on October 23. Morocco is also a country with which we have consolidated the new stage in our relations and with which we maintain excellent cooperation in terms of border security, as we see with Ceuta and Melilla; and trade, reaching 22 billion euros last year. A foreign policy that defends the interests of the Spanish people, their companies and their workers. That defends our institutions, all of them, against any attack. In short, a foreign policy like ours, which has its own voice and weight in the international arena and projects the values of Spanish society in the world: tolerance, diversity, democracy, equality. This is what the Spanish Foreign Service does.
