<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Since October 15, the Agreement between Spain and the United Kingdom on the free exercise of paid activities by dependent relatives of members of Diplomatic Missions and Consular Offices, signed in London on September 16, 2024, has been provisionally applied.</strong></h4> The beneficiaries of this agreement are dependent relatives who are part of the household of a member of a diplomatic mission or a consular office of the accrediting State who wish to carry out a paid occupation that is not subject to the applicable rules of international law, such as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963 or any other equivalent bilateral agreement. Under the agreement, published this past Wednesday by the Official State Gazette (BOE), the dependent family members of these persons are authorized to carry out paid activities in the receiving State, under the same conditions as the nationals of said State, once the corresponding authorization has been obtained in accordance with the provisions of this agreement. Spain has ratified agreements of this nature with more than thirty States. For the purposes of this agreement, dependent family members are understood to be spouses, common-law partners or partners with whom a union similar to a marital one is maintained (provided that it is recognized as such by the authorities of both countries), unmarried children under 18 years of age, children between 18 and 25 years of age who are studying full-time in an educational institution approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the receiving State and children, regardless of their age, who live with their parents and have some physical or mental disability. According to the Government, this type of agreement responds to the social transformation that Spain has experienced in recent decades, which has also been reflected in the figure of the partners and dependent family members of officials in the Spanish foreign service, which has evolved to a different profile from the traditional one. The vast majority of these people have an academic education, a higher or university degree, technical training and work experience that they do not wish to interrupt, but rather, on the contrary, wish to develop while accompanying their partner on an official mission abroad.
